Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 4 No. 3 (July 2013)
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ranthropology
Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 4 No. 3 (July 2013)
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Board of Reviewers
Dr. Fiona Bowie (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol)
Dr. Iain R. Edgar (Dept. Anthropology, Durham University)
Prof. David J. HufFord (Centre for Ethnography & Folklore, University of Pennsylvania)
Prof. Charles D. Laughlin (Dept. Sociology & Anthropology, Carleton University)
Dr. David Luke (Dept. Psychology & Counseling, University of Greenwich)
Dr. James McClenon (Dept. Social Sciences, Elizabeth State University)
Dr. Sean O'Callaghan (Department of Politics, Philosophy & Religion, University of Lancaster)
Dr. Serena Roney-Dougal (Psi Research Centre, Glastonbury)
Dr. William Rowlandson (Dept. Hispanic Studies, University of Kent)
Dr. Mark A. Schroll (Institute for Consciousness Studies, Rhine Research Centre)
Dr. Gregory Shushan (Ian Ramsay Centre for Science & Religion, University of Oxford)
Dr. Angela Voss (EXESESO, University of Exeter)
Dr. Lee Wilson (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
Dr. Michael Winkelman (School of Human Evolution & Social Change, Arizona State University)
Prof. David E. Young (Dept. Anthropology, University of Alberta)
Honorary Members of the Board
Prof. Stephen Braude (Dept. Philosophy, University of Maryland)
Paul Devereux (Royal College of Art)
Prof. Charles F. Emmons (Dept. Sociology, Gettysburg College)
Prof. Patric V Giesler (Dept. Anthropology, Gustavus Adolphus College)
Prof. Ronald Hutton (Dept. History, University of Bristol)
Prof. Stanley Krippner (Faculty of Psychology, Saybrook University)
Dr. Edith Turner (Dept. Anthropology, University of Virginia)
Dr. Robert Van de Castle (Dept. Psychiatry, University of Virginia)
Editor
Jack Hunter (Dept. Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Bristol)
Cover Artwork
Jack Hunter
Vol. 4 No. 3
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Introduction:
Taking Experience Seriously
Jack Hunter
Consciousness is one of the great mysteries of
contemporary science and philosophy (Nagel
2012:35), and is currently undergoing some-
thing of a resurgence of interest as a field of
investigation (Zahavi 2005:3). Many commenta-
tors have noted, however, that the bulk of re-
search into the nature of consciousness pro-
ceeds according to a fairly restricted idea of the
types of approach that can be fruitfully applied
to it (Jahn & Dunne 1997:204). Recently emerg-
ing as chief amongst the dominant approaches
is the neurophysiological approach, which at-
tempts to understand consciousness as either
identical with, or as an epiphenomenon of,
physical brain function (Churchland 1982).
This kind of reductionism, often referred to as
'mind/brain identity theory' that is the idea
that consciousness and brain-function are syn-
onymous, is becoming increasingly popular in
both the professional academic literature and
the popular science literature (Searle
1998:xii-xiii). Such reductionist accounts of
consciousness have proliferated to the extent
that philosopher and neurologist Raymond Tal-
ks has coined the term 'neuromania' to refer to
the belief that contemporary neuroscience
proves that consciousness is identical with brain
function and that free will is an illusion (Talks
2012). The current debate over consciousness,
and in particular the relation of consciousness
to the brain (the mind/body problem), is there-
fore torn over the question of whether con-
sciousness can be reduced solely to the function-
ing of the brain or whether it might be some-
thing more than this.
Whether consciousness can be reduced to
brain function or not, however, the popular
emphasis on quantitative, experimental, and
neurophysiological approaches to the study of
consciousness is not representative of the full
spectrum of possible approaches. There are
other means of investigation. Indeed, writing as long
ago as the early Twentieth Century, psychologist Wil-
liam James (1842-1910) stressed the fact that any
model of the universe that fails to take into account
the complexities of subjective experience will ulti-
Vol. 4 No. 3
Contents
Introduction: Taking Experience Seriously
- Jack Hunter (3-8)-
Experience and Studying the Paranormal
- Charles F. Emmons & Penelope Emmons (9-13)-
Lord of the Flies:
The Phenomenology of a Possession
- Peter Mark Adams (14-18) -
Recognising the Voice of God
- Tanya M. Luhrmann (19-20) -
From Sleep Paralysis to Spiritual Experience: An Inter-
view With David Hufford
- John W. Morehead (21-28)-
The Experiencing Brain
- Charles D. Laughlin (29-34) -
UFOs and Other Anomalous Phenomena:
Connections, Beliefs and Perspectives
- Jose Banuelos (35-40) -
The Culture of War, "Afterlife Conscious Minds," & Mor-
phogenetic Fields: The Past Soundscapes of an American
Civil War Battlefield
- John G. Sabol (41-47) -
Processes of Experience
- Donnalee Dox (48-53) -
The Brain and Spiritual Experiences:
Towards a Neuroscientific Hermeneutic
- Andrew B. Newberg (54-62) -
Ultra-Terrestrials and the UFO Phenomenon:
A Response to Steven Mizrach
- Jason Colavito (64-68) -
Musings on Good, Evil and the Conquest of Mexico: An
Interview With Graham Hancock
- William Rowlandson (69-78) -
[REVIEW] Through a Glass Darkly:
Magic, Dreams & Prophecy in Ancient Egypt
- Callum E. Cooper (79-80) -
mately be doomed to incompleteness James 2004
[1902]:335). Echoing this sentiment more recently,
Thomas Nagel has written that '[t]he existence of
consciousness seems to imply that the physical de-
scription of the universe, in spite of its richness and
explanatory power, is only part of the truth' (Nagel
3
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
2012:35), the very existence of subjective experience
implies that a purely physical explanation of con-
sciousness is not possible. Consciousness is, after all,
fundamentally entwined with experience (Blackmore
2005:5), and it would seem counterintuitively detri-
mental to attempt to divorce experience from the
study of consciousness. Indeed the Oxford Diction-
ary of Psychology characterizes consciousness specifi-
cally as 'the experience of perceptions, thoughts, feel-
ings, awareness of the external world,
and.. .self-awareness' (Colman 2009:164). In the
words of philosopher David Chalmers (1995) experi-
ence itself is the 'hard problem of consciousness.' It
would seem reasonable, therefore, to take subjective
experience seriously, and to explore what experience
itself might tell us about the nature of consciousness.
Quantitative & Qualitative
Approaches
Qualitative methodologies, defined as 'forms of data
collection and analysis which rely on understanding,
with an emphasis on meaning' (Scott & Marshall
2009:618), can provide a route towards investigating
consciousness as experienced, and can reveal many
aspects unobtainable through neurophysiological in-
vestigation. For example, an fMRI scan could not
express the redness of a red apple, or the blueness of
a blue sky, let alone what it is like to experience
pleasure, pain, love or hate. This is not to deny the
relevance and importance of quantitative neuro-
physiological research, rather it is a reminder that
there is more in the way of richness and meaning to
the experience of consciousness than is often pre-
sented in neurophysiological accounts. Again, echo-
ing William James, the richness and significance of
experience are just as much a part of the universe as
any physical object, and as such demand to be taken
seriously. In order to examine subjective experience it
is necessary to take a qualitative, phenomenological
approach.
The phenomenological method was first devel-
oped in a systematic way by the German philosopher
Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) as a means to investi-
gate the 'structures of consciousness as experienced
from the first-person point of view' In order to inves-
tigate first-person experience in a meaningful way,
Husserl developed the notion of epoche, a process of
observation whereby all assumptions about a phe-
nomenon are 'bracketed out' in order to understand
it as it is experienced (Ashworth 1996:2), as 'pure
consciousness,' without a priori conclusions about the
Vol. 4 No. 3
ultimate nature of the experience, or biased interpre-
tations of it (Heath 2000:56). Robert Sharf, for in-
stance, writes of the aim of phenomenological brack-
eting in the study of religion:
If we can bracket out our own presuppositions,
temper our ingrained sense of cultural superi-
ority, and resist the temptation to evaluate the
truth claims of foreign traditions, we find that
their experience of the world possesses its own
rationality, its own coherence, its own truth
(Sharf 2000:268)
The phenomenological approach, therefore, aims to
understand experience (or religion, culture, love, the
paranormal, and so on) as experienced and under-
stood by the experiencer, in its own terms. This is the
qualitative nature of consciousness, what it feels like
to experience consciousness.
Hillary S. Webb has used the analogy of 'clock
systems' and 'cloud systems,' first employed by the
philosopher of science Karl Popper, to illustrate the
different aspects of consciousness illuminated by
quantitative and qualitative approaches respectively.
Quantitative approaches focus on the 'clock systems'
of consciousness, which provide 'insight into, and
information about, the physiological and behavioral
implications of consciousness,' factors that can be
recorded and analysed using the standard methods of
experimental science. Such research is useful in dem-
onstrating the physiological correlates of conscious-
ness, but ultimately cannot provide insight into the
lived experience of consciousness. Research on the
'cloud systems,' referring to those 'aspects of con-
sciousness that are unpredictable and free flowing,'
however, can begin to fill in the gaps left in our un-
derstanding by the quantitative methods (Velmans
2007a:724; Webb 2012:7). Qualitative data begin to
fill the gaps left in the neurophysiological account.
Without qualitative descriptions of conscious experi-
ences the physiological description of brain states will
forever remain incomplete.
The Explanatory Gap
The neurophysiological (quantitative) and phenome-
nological (qualitative) accounts of consciousness are
two sides of the same phenomenon. Firsthand, sub-
jective conscious experiences are undoubtedly corre-
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
lated with neurophysiological brain activity (Rees et
al. 2002), and yet a so-called 'explanatory gap' per-
sists because it is not yet clear how physical brain ac-
tivity can be associated with subjective experience. In
his famous article 'What is it Like to Be a Bat?'
(1974), Thomas Nagel argues that:
...the subjective character of experience... is not
captured by any of the familiar, recently de-
vised reductive analyses of the mental, for all
of them are logically compatible with its ab-
sence (1974:436)
According to the dominant materialist view, physical
matter is essentially inert, possessing no form of con-
sciousness, which, naturally, is incompatible with the
phenomenon of conscious experience. This problem
is, therefore, a deep one, and runs at the core of the
debate over consciousness: how can physical matter
(such as the stuff from which we are made) have sub-
jective experience?
Max Velmans (2007b) recognises two distinct ap-
proaches to the issue of the relationship between
matter and subjective consciousness, which he labels
discontinuity and continuity theories. Discontinuity
theories essentially take the physical materialist ap-
proach and suggest that consciousness emerged
through the evolution of sufficiently complex biologi-
cal systems (nervous systems and brains), and conse-
quently is only found in sufficiently complex organ-
isms, hence it is discontinuous in the universe - occur-
ring only where complex organisms are found. Of
course, this still leaves open the question of how and
why matter, once it reaches a sufficiently complex
state of organisation, becomes conscious. The alter-
native view, which Velmans feels to be the most par-
simonious, is the continuity model, according to
which consciousness is a fundamental property of
matter itself. This is a perspective that might be
termed panpsychism. Velmans writes that according
to this view:
...all forms of matter have an associated form
of consciousness, although in complex life
forms such as ourselves, much of this con-
sciousness is inhibited. In the cosmic explosion
that gave birth to the universe, consciousness
co-emerged with matter and co-evolves with it.
As matter became more differentiated and de-
veloped in complexity consciousness became
correspondingly differentiated and
complex.. .Its emergence, with the birth of the
Vol. 4 No. 3
universe, is neither more nor less mysterious
than the emergence of matter, energy, space
and time (Velmans 2007b:279)
Currentiy the explanatory gap that exists between the
physical structure and functioning of our brains and
the subjective nature of our conscious experiences
remains open, though there are models that attempt
to close it. Only time will tell which model will prove
to be correct (if indeed any current model is correct).
For the time being, however, research must continue,
not just into the physiological structure of the brain
but also into the nature of subjective experience in all
of its varied forms, in the hope that such research
might contribute to the solution of these long-
standing problems.
Taking Experience Seriously:
What Are The Consequences?
Taking experience seriously, and using it as a means
to approach the nature of consciousness may present
the researcher with novel aspects of consciousness
that would otherwise go unnoticed. Indeed, there are
many peculiar quirks of subjective experience that
might point us towards unexpected facets of the na-
ture of consciousness. For example, what might near-
death and out-of-body experiences tell us about the
nature of consciousness? What might the trance ex-
periences of shamans and mediums, the visionary
experiences of mystics, or paranormal experiences
tell us about the nature of consciousness? What does
the psychedelic experience tell us about conscious-
ness? There are countiess such questions, and we will
briefly explore a few of them over the next couple of
pages.
Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)
Near-death experience (NDE) researchers Sam Par-
nia and Peter Fenwick have argued that the NDE
poses a significant challenge to the notion that con-
sciousness and thought are 'produced by the interac-
tion of large groups of neurones or neural networks'
(2002:9 emphasis added). They write:
...the fact that [experiences recalled during
periods of severely compromised cerebral
functioning and no electrical activity in the
cerebral cortex and deeper brain structures]
raises some questions regarding our current
views on the nature of human consciousness
(Parnia & Fenwick 2002:9)
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Parnia and Fenwick suggest that the NDE experience
opens up the debate over the nature of consciousness
to alternative theories of the relationship between
consciousness and the brain. As examples of alterna-
tive scientific models they list Roger Penrose and Stu-
art Hameroff 's theory of consciousness as a quantum
process within neuronal microtubules (Hameroff &
Penrose 1996), Rupert Sheldrake's notion of con-
sciousness as a 'morphic field' (Sheldrake 1987), and
the dualist idea that 'mind or consciousness may ac-
tually be a fundamental scientific entity in its own
right irreducible to anything more basic' (Parnia &
Fenwick 2002:9). Whether consciousness is any of
these things or something else entirely, however, the
important thing to note in the context of the theme
of this anthology is that taking the phenomenology of
the near-death experience seriously demands a recon-
sideration of the dominant mind/brain identity the-
ory of consciousness, rekindles debate, and opens up
new avenues for scientific inquiry.
Trance Experiences
As an illustration of the kind of insights that can
come from taking the experiences of trance mediums
seriously we now turn to recent fascinating neuroi-
maging research conducted by Julio Fernando Peres
and colleagues (Peres et al. 2012). During the practice
of automatic writing (psychography), mediums claim
to enter into a trance state during which their physi-
cal body comes under the influence of a discarnate
entity, which then uses the medium's body to write
out messages using a pen and paper. During the
trance the medium experiences a state of dissociation
whereby the physical movements of their body are no
longer felt to be under their conscious control. The
standard materialist scientific approach to such claims
is dismissal, because, according to the dominant ma-
terialist paradigm, mediumistic phenomena are im-
possible, therefore automatic writing must be fraudu-
lent. Nevertheless, Peres' research team did take the
experiences of mediums seriously and used single
photon emission computed tomography to scan the
brain activity of ten automatic writers (five experi-
enced, five less experienced), while in trance. The
research findings have been summarised as follows:
The researchers found that the experienced
psychographers showed lower levels of activity
in the left hippocampus (limbic system), right
superior temporal gyrus, and the frontal lobe
regions of the left anterior cingulate and right
Vol. 4 No. 3
precentral gyrus during psychography com-
pared to their normal (non-trance) writing.
The frontal lobe areas are associated with rea-
soning, planning, generating language, move-
ment, and problem solving, perhaps reflecting
an absence of focus, self-awareness and con-
sciousness during psychography, the research-
ers hypothesize. Less expert psychographers
showed just the opposite — increased levels of
CBF in the same frontal areas during psycho-
graphy compared to normal writing. The dif-
ference was significant compared to the experi-
enced mediums (Thomas Jefferson University
2012).
The implication here is that during the trance state of
the experienced automatic writers, activity is reduced
in the areas of the brain usually associated with rea-
soning, planning, language, movement and problem
solving, suggesting that the medium's dissociative ex-
perience during trance is far from delusional or
fraudulent. Furthermore, the researchers conducted
an analysis of the complexity of the writing and
found that, contrary to what would normally be ex-
pected, the complexity increased as the activity in the
areas of the brain usually associated with such com-
plex behaviours was reduced. This raises the question
of how, if the brain's functioning was reduced, such
complex writing was possible. The spiritist interpreta-
tion suggests that it was spirits doing to writing while
the medium's consciousness was absent, and the data
could indeed be read in this way. More cautiously,
however, Andrew Newberg has suggested that this
research 'reveals some exciting data to improve our
understanding of the mind and its relationship with
the brain' and calls for further research in this area
(Thomas Jefferson University 2012). Again we see
that taking experience seriously, in this case the
trance experiences of mediums, instead of dismissing
them as delusional or fraudulent, opens up new ave-
nues for inquiry and provides tantalising insights into
the relationship between consciousness and the body
that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.
Psychedelic Experiences
Interestingly, a recent functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) studies of the effects of psilocybin
(the active compound found in magic mushrooms),
has revealed similar patterns of deactivation of cer-
tain brain regions while under the influence of the
psychedelic compound. The study, conducted by
Robin Carhart-Harris and colleagues (2011), found
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
decreases of cerebral blood flow in the thalamus and
anterior and postulate cingulate cortex after the ad-
ministration of psilocybin to research participants.
The researchers also found that the magnitude of the
decrease in blood flow was correlated with the inten-
sity of the subjective psychedelic experience, leading
to the conclusion that the results 'strongly imply that
the subjective effects of psychedelic drugs are caused
by decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's
key connector hubs, enabling a state of uncon-
strained cognition' (Carh art-Harris et al. 2011:2138).
The association of heightened subjective experience
with decreased neurological activity certainly poses
interesting questions about the link between con-
sciousness and the brain. Indeed these findings,
amongst others, have led some researchers to suggest
a 'filter theory' of consciousness, as originally sug-
gested by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), and borrowing
from Aldous Huxley's (1894-1963) conception of the
brain as a 'reducing valve' for consciousness (Luke &
Friedman 2010; Luke 2012:99; Kastrup 2012; see
also Carter 2012 for an overview of the filter/
transmission model). This position suggests that
rather than producing conscious experience the brain
acts as a receiver of consciousness, so that when, un-
der certain circumstances (such as mediumistic trance
states, or while under the influence of psychedelics),
brain activity is decreased so conscious experience is
increased, or expanded (Kripal 2011:). Once again,
taking the psychedelic experience seriously has pro-
vided surprising insights into potential models of
mind/brain interaction.
This Issue
The papers contained within this issue take a variety
of theoretical and methodological approaches to the
study of conscious experience, but all are united in
their attempt to take experience seriously as a valid
subject for inquiry
Rather than attempting to present a unified ap-
proach, it is the editor's hope that the different per-
spectives presented in this issue (from the mystical to
the neurological), will provide the reader with
thought provoking material that might inform them
in the development of their own particular approach
to this fascinating aspect of existence.
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Biography
Jack Hunter is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Archae-
ology and Anthropology at the University of Bristol. His research
takes the form of an ethnographic study of contemporary trance
and physical mediumship in Bristol, focusing on themes of person-
hood, performance, altered states of consciousness and anoma-
lous experience. In 2010 he established 'Paranthropology: Journal
of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal' as a means to
promote an interdisciplinary dialogue on issues of the paranormal.
In 2010 he was awarded the Eileen J. Garrett Scholarship by the
Parapsychology Foundation, and in 2011 he received the Gertrude
Schmeidler Award from the Parapsychological Association and a
research grant from the Society for Psychical Research. He is the
author of Why People Believe in Spirits, Gods and Magic (2012),
an introduction to the anthropology of the supernatural.
Vol. 4 No. 3
8
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Experience and Studying the Paranormal
Charles F. Emmons & Penelope Emmons
There is a great deal of doubt in mainstream sci-
ence about the appropriateness of scientific research
on the 'paranormal,' ranging from healthy skepticism
to ridicule. Even some (many? most?) scientists who
dare to study the paranormal display at least a
healthy degree of skepticism themselves. Some of this
is no doubt a reaction to the attack from mainstream
science. However, keep in mind that scientists in gen-
eral, no matter how mainstream or anomalous their
subject matter, have not only been trained in the
methods of science, but have also been socialized
mostly in a Western cultural context that privileges
science as a way of knowing. Even the Western spirit
mediums we studied (Emmons & Emmons 2003)
tended to be skeptical of their own work, often look-
ing for 'confirmations' that their readings were evi-
dential instead of something they were just making
up in their heads.
Therefore, it often takes some kind of dramatic
personal experience for a scientist to get past a mate-
rialist mindset and to become open-minded enough
and curious enough to look into the study of anoma-
lies. My favorite account of such an experience is
Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's (2007:2-4) adventure with
her daughter's harp. The expensive, handmade harp
had been stolen at a theater in Oakland, California,
where she played in a concert. Having failed to find it
after extensive help from the police, and media,
Mayer reluctantly agreed to a friend's suggestion that
she contact a dowser (a practitioner who allegedly
finds things, underground or elsewhere, by means of
dowsing rods).
Her friend directed Mayer to the president of the
American Society of Dowsers, whom she then called
on the phone. From Arkansas, the dowser paused
briefly, then told her that the harp was still in Oak-
land and asked her to send him a street map of the
city. Two days after she sent the map, the dowser
called her back and told her, 'It's in the second house
on the right on D Street, just off
L Avenue' (Mayer 2007:3). Mayer located
the house, then gave the address to the police, who
predictably told her that 'a tip' was not enough
Vol. 4 No. 3
grounds to get a search warrant. Besides, they said,
surely the harp had been fenced out of the area by
then.
At this point Mayer put up flyers in a two-block
area around the house, offering a reward for the
harp. 'It was a crazy idea... [and] I was embarrassed
enough about what I was doing to tell just a couple of
close friends about it' (Mayer 2007:3). Three days
later a man called saying that the harp described on
the flyer he'd seen outside his house matched exactly
a harp his next-door neighbor had recently acquired.
After two weeks of 'a series of circuitous phone calls'
it was agreed that she would meet a teenage boy in a
store parking lot. Sure enough, it was her daughter's
harp. 'Twenty-five minutes later, as I turned into my
driveway, I had the thought, This changes
everything..! had to face the fact that my notions of
space, time, reality and the nature of the human
mind were stunningly inadequate' (Mayer 2007:3-4).
After that she began to delve into the literature
on anomalies and started to share experiences with
her psychology colleagues and others at the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. She died
just after completing her book Extraordinary Know-
ing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers
of the Human Mind (Mayer 2007), the source for the
above account.
Fortunately we have more than just 'anecdotal'
evidence for scientists changing their values or inter-
ests based on personal experiences (and not just on
their knowledge of research findings). In a survey of
elite scientists, McClenon (1984:162) found that 'be-
lief in ESP is more closely related to personal experi-
ence [with paranormal events] than to familiarity
with the research literature on psi.' In other words, it
may be that research is less convincing than personal
experience when it comes to 'things that aren't sup-
posed to happen' (deviant knowledge).
This does not surprise me. In my study of 91
UFO researchers (84 of whom had advanced de-
grees, including 76 doctorates), the most important
single reason they gave for wanting to (daring to)
study UFOs was thinking that they had had a UFO
9
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
experience themselves (Emmons 1997:48-54). Alto-
gether 48% thought they had had an experience, and
another 8% thought they might have. This contrasts
with polls of the general population in which only
between 5% and 14% thought they had seen a UFO.
Although some of these ufologists kept their work
secret, most of them had undergone risks to their
careers by conducting UFO research. It often takes
some kind of powerful personal curiosity to be willing
to buck the social control system in academe and
government (not so much in business). As one of the
UFO researchers told me ('Dr. X,' Emmons
1997:52-54), after he and his wife and at least one
other witness had experienced a brightly-colored low-
flying ferris-wheel-shaped object that drove them off
the highway, he no longer doubted that UFOs ex-
isted; he just had to find out what they were.
Lest you think that an experience always carries
the day ('seeing is believing'), I should point out that I
had some amusing interviews with astronomers for
my UFO study in which they told me that they did
not believe in ESP or other anomalies, then pro-
ceeded to relate to me their own strange experiences.
On another occasion I watched a tape of a man de-
scribing his disturbing nighttime visitation involving
what he interpreted as a ghost, at the end of which
he stated, And I don't even believe in ghosts.'
Mayer (2007:108, 113) relates that Hal Puthoff,
on the last day of the CIA-sponsored program in re-
mote viewing that he and Russell Targ worked on at
SRI, thought to himself, 'I can't be doing this. These
data can't be real; it's simply not possible.' But the
evidence was too strong. He said, 'The problem lay
with my beliefs.' I don't want to make too much of
this psychological issue, because I still think that the
main issue is social organizational (the interests of the
scientific establishment and of those who benefit
from it), but Puthoff 's case is still interesting. It shows
how being socialized to the dominant paradigm
makes it difficult even for scientists who dare to do
the research not to be super-skeptical.
Even studying how personal experience impacts
scientists' willingness to study anomalies is easier for
the sociologist in me to accept when I think about my
own 'experience with experience.' Here are a couple
of examples (see also Emmons and Emmons
2003:93-109).
Before the age of 19 I never thought that I had
experienced anything paranormal, until I took a psy-
chology course run by Professor John Fleming at
Gannon College. Although I was an atheist at the
time, and felt sure that the universe could be ex-
Vol. 4 No. 3
plained entirely by the normal laws of physics, I was
astonished to hear fascinating accounts of research
on ESP and PK. Instead of taking an 'it can't be;
therefore it isn't' attitude, however, I thought, 'It
shouldn't be, but it seems to be, so I'd better check it
out.'
I decided to try a study of my own, one in PK
(mind over matter). In the following summer I rolled
3 dice at a time for a total of over 200,000 up-faces,
'trying for' a 5 on each one. The results were hits
11/2 to 2 percent in excess of the expected value,
with odds billions to one against this outcome for the
size of the sample. Professor Fleming consulted with
J.B. Rhine on my data sheets, who said they con-
tained typical 'decline effects' (very cold streaks after
very hot streaks). Fleming also had my dice tested
(rolled in a machine) in a lab setting without me pre-
sent, and the dice appeared slightly biased against
fives, meaning that the odds against my results were
even greater than expected.
That hooked me for life, I think, but my first ac-
tual sociological/anthropological study of the para-
normal didn't come until about 18 years later, in my
book Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Be-
liefs and Experiences (1982), in which I used social scien-
tific techniques to compare ghost experiences, among
other things, in Western and Eastern cultures. I found
that apparition experiences were very much the same
phenomenologically in spite of significant cultural
differences in beliefs (Emmons 1982). For example,
firsthand reports of apparition experiences in both
cultures almost never occurred simultaneously with
physical effects, in spite of strong beliefs in Chinese
culture that ghosts often attack people physically.
Although I have had many other personal expe-
riences that have boosted my curiosity, probably the
most significant set of experiences got me interested
in the research on spirit mediums in the United States
(Emmons & Emmons 2003). Most of these experi-
ences connect to the death of my mother in 1993
(Emmons & Emmons 2003:101-107). I got the im-
pression that I was communicating with my mother
after her death, at first hearing her voice in my left
ear. I could have chalked it up to my imagination,
except that there were many evidential aspects to the
communication. For example, on several occasions it
appeared that she would help me find lost objects, or
warn me about little accidents that were about to
happen if I didn't avoid them (like a bike u-turning
right back toward me, which oddly happened twice
within about two minutes, with different riders on
different streets). The warning was 'watch out,' which
10
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
I heard internally a few seconds before each bicycle
event. It got to the point that it seemed to me to be
unscientific not to see some significance in such un-
usual occurrences.
Fortunately I still retain the skepticism to consider
other interpretations (like clairvoyance rather than
spirit communication). Such experiences may or may
not convince anybody else, but they have been
enough to stimulate me to study paranormal issues
(probably at a cost to my career). I also never want to
lose my skeptical side. After all, my curiosity addic-
tion is not satisfied by 'believing' (I don't believe in
belief; I believe in evidence, which includes personal
experience), and accepting things without adequate
evidence would be like cheating myself, or cheating at
solitaire.
Another interesting experience took place while
at college in 1964, although I thought strongly at the
time that it was probably a hoax: a table-tipping
demonstration (Emmons & Emmons 2003:137-138).
At a cast party after our final performance, four of us
sat around a card table with our hands on top (no
thumbs underneath, it appeared). The table rose a
good foot and a half before I dropped under the table
to investigate. I could discover no tricks, although I
suspected two people who had whispered something
to each other over the table before we started.
Stephen Braude, philosophy professor at Univer-
sity of Maryland (Baltimore Campus), and a promi-
nent writer in the field of paranormal research, also
had a 'table-up seance' experience in graduate
school. He told me that several factors made it seem
genuine: it was his table, the participants were not
'jokers,' and it was in daylight. The memory of this
experience, which he thought needed confronting,
stayed with him, but he waited until he was safely
tenured as a professor before becoming involved in
research on such matters.
Robert Waggoner (2009:4-7), a researcher in the
field of lucid dreaming, had his own experiences with
lucid dreams, precognitive dreams, and visions of his
'inner advisor' by ages 11 and 12. Then he read
books by Carlos Castaneda as a teenager and contin-
ued to have lucid dreams, learning to practice staying
aware within such dreams, which is still a practical
focus of his research today.
Russell Targ, laser physicist and remote viewing
researcher, told me about his childhood interest in
trick magic, which led to his experiencing apparently
real ESP while engaging in his performance tricks.
His curiosity over his personal experience led him to
build an ESP teaching machine involving a 4-choice
Vol. 4 No. 3
option, with the target selected by a random-number
generator. People could learn from feedback, know-
ing what it felt like when they were successful.
By contrast some researchers have become inter-
ested in anomalies without first having personal expe-
riences to motivate them. Other strong motivators
come from reading and from social influences from
friends and family (some of whom may have had
their own experiences). Reasons given by UFO re-
searchers are similar (Emmons 1997:51). This also
parallels the reasons for spirit mediums becoming
socialized into their role (Emmons & Emmons
2003:210-217). In other words, in spite of the sociali-
zation process and social control system in main-
stream science (and religion), there are other ways for
people to become socialized to 'deviant' knowledge.
For example, Dean Radin (1997:300), psi lab re-
searcher at IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences),
writes about his curiosity stemming from reading sci-
ence fiction stories, something Russell Targ did as
well. Radin says that people in his family, including
himself, did not have paranormal experiences when
he was young. He never had a conversion experience
and has been hooked on the data only (Mayer
2007:226).
Radin did tell us at a meeting of the Society for
Scientific Exploration, however, that he tends to have
precognitive dreams as an adult. Once he had a
dream that he would be in a car accident the follow-
ing day. Not wanting to be in a car accident,' he said,
he decided to take a very circuitous route to work the
next day, one that he did not take ordinarily, but then
he was rear-ended. I couldn't help speculating on
how a New Ager or Spiritualist might interpret such
an experience. For example, maybe the Universe was
having fun with him, Dean Radin the big psi re-
searcher, who conducts lab tests for precognition. It
raises paradoxical questions about such things as
whether the future is predetermined and whether one
could change it based on prior knowledge.
Darlene Miller, Director of Programs at The
Monroe Institute (TMI), told me about a blend of
social influence, reading, and personal experiences in
her background. Having been raised a fundamental-
ist Christian, and switching to atheism in college, she
was later introduced to ideas from TMI by business
associates who had attended the institute. This, plus
contact with The Course in Miracles material,
changed her perspective on things. The same associ-
ates led her to try reiki healing, with which she had a
dramatic experience involving intense heat that took
her pain away in ten minutes. After that she took the
11
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Gateway experience from TMI and moved to TMI
the following summer.
Robin Wooffitt, head of the Anomalous Experi-
ences Research Unit, a sociological research depart-
ment at the University of York, England, had early
reading influences, somewhat like Dean Radin. As a
child he was interested in comics, pop novels, horror
films and things generally related to the occult. These
led him to the paranormal and the supernatural. Al-
though he recalled no anomalous experiences of his
own as a youth, and only a couple of things in the
past few years that 'could be data,' he told me that
nowadays he is primarily very skeptical, having been
more open to such things as a child.
Al Rauber and Garrett Husveth, two paranormal
investigators in the United States, both said in a joint
interview that their earliest influences came from
reading Al read a book on ghosts as a sophomore in
high school, then read everything he could find on
the paranormal, hauntings and ESP. Garrett said that
he became interested in ghosts at age five or six, then
read all that he could about parapsychology, EVP
(electronic voice phenomenon), ghosts and hauntings.
The two of them started working together in the late
1 980s. Both of them seem more focused on investiga-
tive methodology than on any personal experiences
they might have had.
Mark Nesbitt, historian and writer of the Ghosts
of Gettysburg series (1991), told me that he had been
interested in ghosts as a kid, and later as a park
ranger in Gettysburg he would ask people if they had
heard about ghosts on the battlefield or in the historic
houses there. Of course the official position of the
Park Service (and of the Visitor's Center in Gettys-
burg, I might add, where I spotted nary a book about
ghost experiences or ghost folklore), has been to deny
or ignore ghost experiences, probably out of needing
to appear 'respectable' I should think. However,
Mark, wanting to be a writer, began to record the
many experiences people reported to him, and in
recent years he has had some experiences of his own.
Back to academe, let me relate the background of
four graduate students in the UK who were involved
in studying the paranormal when I visited in 2008.
Madeleine Castro, a PhD candidate at the University
of York, England, said that she was curious about the
unexplained from about age twelve, and she 'ques-
tioned the God thing' Activities with other youths at
renewal camps and around the campfire, including
shared extraordinary experiences, contributed to her
curiosity about anomalous experiences, which she
now studies in a sociological frame.
Vol. 4 No. 3
Sarah Metcalfe, also at the University of York,
whose research involves a sociological and medical
approach to spirit mediumship, was originally intro-
duced to the subject by her best friend who was a
spirit medium. Sarah also attended a Spiritualist
Church 'for entertainment' rather than as a regular
member. She started out believing in mediumship but
is now agnostic about it, nevertheless retaining a re-
search interest.
Hannah Gilbert, another sociology graduate stu-
dent at the University of York, told me that she had
had no anomalous experiences as a child, but that she
did have an interest in such things that was supported
by her father, an academic psychologist. They even
did some work together studying spiritual healing.
Eventually she ended up doing sociological research
on the subjective experiences of spirit mediums.
Another graduate student, name omitted for
confidentiality, was interested from an early age due
to her grandmother who practiced mediumship, as-
trology, and tarot-card reading. As an adult she
helped run a community group that held workshops
in these same subjects. Although her perspective has
changed from her younger years, when she 'used to
believe everything,' she ended up studying Internet
communities involved in neopaganism and Wicca.
Before concluding this chapter on how experi-
ence spurs scientists into daring to research anoma-
lous events, I should also point out that some people
take the position that experience is actually more im-
portant than science, at least in terms of convincing
people to accept the paranormal as real. Tami Si-
mon, in the editorial introduction to Measuring the
Immeasurable: The Scientific Case for Spirituality
(2008:ix-x), states, 'I am not a person who needs sci-
ence or research to convince me of the benefits of
spiritual practice.' However, Simon continues to ex-
plain that science is useful for legitimating the use of
spiritual practices in the work of medical profession-
als, and for refining such practices.
Paul Rademacher, director of The Monroe Insti-
tute, although supportive of the use of science at
TMI, said to me that we tend to think that something
is real if we can prove it by science, but experience
comes first. In his case, when he had a construction
accident as a young man, he had the experience of
breaking through the pain and into a state of peace,
in which he was surrounded by a being of light.
Later, while in the ministry, he heard a clear, precise
voice go off in his head, telling him of a book he
must read. Through such spiritual guidance he ended
up at TMI. Skip Atwater, also at TMI, had numerous
12
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
out-of-body experiences as a child. It was these expe-
riences, plus his involvement with remote viewing in
the military, that left him with little doubt about the
reality of such phenomena.
Finally I am reminded of a Spiritualist who said
to me, after hearing about this research of mine,
'Let's leave the scientists out of it.' As you might
guess, I have no intention of doing that. However, as
a (social) scientist, I am still very much interested in
learning from people's subjective anomalous experi-
ences.
References
Emmons, C.E (1982). Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study
of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences. Metuchen,
New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.
Emmons, C.E (1997). At the Threshold: UFOs, Science
and the New Age. Mill Spring, North Carolina:
Wild Flower Press.
Emmons, C.E & Emmons, P. (2003). Guided by Spirit:
A Journey into the Mind of the Medium. NY: Writers
Club Press.
Mayer, E.L. (2007). Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skep-
ticism and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind.
NY: Bantam Books.
McClenon, J. (1984). Deviant Science: The Case of Para-
psychology. Philadelphia: The U of Pennsylvania
Press.
Nesbitt, M. (1991). Ghosts of Gettysburg: Spirits, Appari-
tions, and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettys-
burg, PA: Thomas Publications.
Radin, D. (1997). The Conscious Universe: The Scientific
Truth of Psychic Phenomena. NY: HarperOne.
Simon, T. (ed.) (2008). Measuring the Unmeasurable: The
Scientific Case for Spirituality. Boulder, CO: Sounds
True.
Waggoner, R. (2009). Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the
Inner Self. Needham, MA: Moment Point Press.
Biographies
Charles Emmons is a
sociologist at Gettysburg
College and author of
books on spiritual and
paranormal topics. His
latest book, coauthored
by his wife, Penelope
Emmons, is Science and
Spirit: Exploring the Lim-
its of Consciousness
(2012). They also col-
laborated on Guided by
Spirit: A Journey into the
Mind of the Medium
(2003). Other publica-
tions by Charlie include
Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal
Beliefs and Experiences (1982), and At the Thresh-
old: UFOs, Science and the New Age (1997). Pe-
nelope Emmons is an ordained minister and
medium. She has given spiritual counseling (read-
ings) for more than twenty years. Penelope has a
BS degree in Education and a Masters in Social
Work from Temple University. She has a private
counseling and coaching practice in Gettysburg, PA.
http://www.scienceandnewage.com/science-and-s
pirit-exploring-the-limits-of-consciousness/
Vol. 4 No. 3
13
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Lord of the Flies:
The Phenomenology of a Possession
Peter Mark Adams
There are few human phenomena that carry the
complexity and ambiguity of possession: it chal-
lenges the notion of a unified, immutable self of a
facile distinction between "acting" and reality; of
who or what is the source of one's actions; even of
humans as single isolated entities. (Cardena
1989)
If the eye could see the demons that people the uni-
verse, existence would be impossible.
Talmud, Berakhot 6
A comparison of the 'inner experiences' of people
suffering from involuntary possession offers unique
opportunities for cross-cultural investigation. By 'in-
ner experiences' I mean those arising from states of
"cognitive, empathetic engagement" (Bowie 2012)
that typify healer-client relations, especially in the
area of natural healing 1 . Coherence across accounts
dealing with similar cases and derived from a range
of healers and their clients establishes a pool of expe-
riences that can then be interrogated. Nevertheless,
'inner' accounts of possession will always seem fan-
tastical, contrary to science and threatening to our
notions of common-sense, personal identity and
autonomy. And yet, it is only by exploring these sub-
tler aspects of reality that we can make progress to-
wards understanding the deeper significance of the
phenomenon (as well as certain other anomalous ex-
periences). From the perspective of practical experi-
ence possession manifests in five well-defined ways:
(1) Infestation (indirect externalization of an
entity's presence).
(2) Oppression (physical harassment by an en-
tity).
(3) Obsession (domination of a person's
thought processes and behavior by an en-
tity).
(4) Possession (forceful displacement of a per-
son's identity by an entity).
(5) Subjugation (voluntary relinquishing of
freewill to an entity).
(Amorth 1999:77)
Since full possession often involves total amnesia, the
nearest that we can come to understanding the inner
experience is through its lesser manifestation: obses-
sion. What follows is the frank and disturbing inside
account of such a case. To provide context I have
framed it with my own experiences dealing with this
client. The events took place outside the context of
any religiously sanctioned exorcism and are therefore
free of the totalizing worldviews of the various faiths.
The client was a happily married father of a new
born, a business and information technology consult-
ant with a major transnational company. He contin-
ued to maintain all of these multiple responsibilities
throughout the course of his treatment, which lasted
roughly eight months. He was also psychically gifted
and therefore able to perceive the progress of his own
case from a unique inner perspective. He had initially
come to me to learn a range of energy-work tech-
niques. As our work progressed he became increas-
ingly aware of 'blockages' in his 'energy anatomy' I
therefore suggested that we conduct cleansing work
on these. As the cleansing progressed the client began
to psychically 'see' 'black, grape-like attachments'
around his lower legs and feet. Each time I cleansed
these attachments a week or so later he reported that
they had returned. In addition his feet now became
1 The intention and desire to facilitate healing provides the 'navigation', for want of a better word, that powers the shifts in
awareness necessary to 'read' the client's 'field' for relevant information. This is a reversed or goal governed process moving
backwards from an intent to heal to the retrieval of the information that will facilitate it. This type of goal governed, retro-
causal process is best described as teleological.
Vol. 4 No. 3 14
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
swollen and purple. The medical doctors he went to
could find no medical cause for his problems.
From my perspective, the re-generation of the
attachments was indicative of deeper problems and I
decided to get a second opinion. Despite my urging
him to consider how he may be contributing to his
situation, up to this point he had been unwilling to
share the crucial information that over a period of
time he had been experiencing frequent erotic
'dreams.' While asleep, or in a dream -like state, he
was approached by what appeared to be a beautiful
woman who engaged in intercourse with him result-
ing in orgasm. Such recurrent 'dreams' are often as-
sociated with psychic 'parasitism,' and with a class of
entities traditionally called 'succubi' (though 'djinn'
encompasses parallel ideas). Such entities would be
difficult enough to deal with, but this case was about
to take an even darker turn. The following account,
in the client's own words, is a rare description of the
actual experience of the course of his possession per-
ceived psychically.
"I had had strange sensations in my legs and
feet. Whilst I was meditating all of the energy
went to the soles of my feet, which felt as
though they were burning in a fire. Each time I
undertook energy work the burning sensation
in my feet got worse. My feet became swollen
and purple all over. I visited medical doctors
who diagnosed me with swollen arteries, pre-
scribed creams and told me not to walk on
grass because I might be allergic to it. In short,
they hadn't a clue what was going on. My
awareness of my condition came about
through a meditative state. It was extremely
fluid, alive, colourful and yet painful at the
same time. I was in a place like a museum.
Standing in one of the rooms a mirror caught
my eye. I stood in front of the mirror. Sud-
denly I felt as though I have been hypnotized
and fixed in place. I felt as though two arms
were holding me. Then I heard chanting and
saw that a tattoo was being carved on my
legs. I screamed in pain and tried to stop what
was going on. I tried to use protective symbols
and energy to stop the ritual. Luckily I was
pulled out of this nightmare and back to reality
by my wife. I knew that I had to seek help from
someone who could undo or remove what had
been done to me. Luckily I was referred to a
lady who worked with higher beings who was
able to help me. I don't want to go into much
Vol. 4 No. 3
detail but I realized that this was a recurring
event in many past lives. I had been ritually
pledged and sacrificed to a group of entities
who used me to fulfil their own purposes. It
was the fragments of these rituals that I had
'seen' so lucidly and re -lived during my medita-
tion. The outcome was that I now realized that
I had attachments all over my body and most
of my energy was being sucked from me. I was
able to see the entities, who were acting upon
the orders of a higher being. They were very
clever and cunning. They knew all my interests
and weak points. The entity tricked me into
opening myself to it by disguising itself as a
beautiful woman and approaching me when I
was at my most defenceless, during sleep. In a
dream, or perhaps better to say, dream-like
state, the entity tricked me into engaging in
intercourse with it. I started going to the
healer. During my treatments I saw that my
legs were covered with what looked like black
grapes. These were the larvae of the entity.
From the energies and substance of our inter-
course this entity bred new entities like itself. I
can only describe these as insectoid or, more
precisely, 'fly-like'. It was like a horror movie.
When they were exorcised I saw thousands of
these 'flies' being released and returning to
their place of origin. Only our trust in God
can help us through these times. Love of God
and nothing else. I am sharing this information
because I believe our relations with such enti-
ties are more common than most people sus-
pect. We must open our awareness. Forgive
ourselves and ask for help. If there is energy
that can be collected and used as a breeding
ground, anyone can become a target. Our rela-
tions with these entities can be understood by
analogy with fungi. If you leave a place dark,
damp and with no ventilation than you will
attract fungi. Our bad habits and vices provide
perfect breeding grounds for them. We need to
get a grip on our animal desires, we are given
an intellect to learn, synthesise information
and determine how we are to go forward in
our lives. We need the light of God, we need
goodness and goodwill. We should stay away
from the things that we know are bad. Do not
tell yourself that it is harmless, that it is just
'one more glass', 'just a web site' or 'just a
dream'."
15
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Cases like this are often associated with a large
amount of diverse and seemingly unrelated detail.
Throughout this experience my client claimed that he
was 'seeing' classic UFO-like craft. However, their
scale was so miniscule that they were able to pass in
and out of his body. He claimed to have seen typical
'grey' aliens in his house and to have discerned tube-
like 'attachments' that connected him to distant des-
tinations through which life-energy was being re-
ceived and syphoned off. Bizarre as all of these de-
tails are, and no matter how out of place they may
seem in the context of possession, they are neverthe-
less consistent with numerous independent accounts
(Baldwin 1998). The description of the fly-like being,
the extraction of energy and the manipulation of his
awareness are also consistent with these accounts 2 .
Finally, during the healing sessions with the specialist,
through her intercession he saw snake like entities
emerge from her and enter his body to accomplish
the healing work. Once more, this is consistent with
accounts of neo-shamanic healing when working
with a class of healing serpent-like entities tradition-
ally known as 'Nagas'.
After eight months of intensive work with the
specialist my client has been pronounced 'clear'. The
possession itself and all of the accompanying phe-
nomena (ETs, greys, larvae) have been cleared up.
Jacques Vallee has proposed a model for the in-
terpretation of anomalous phenomena that employs
six simultaneous dimensions or 'layers of interpreta-
tion' (Vallee 2003). Given this framework we can
breakdown the various components of this account:
(1) Physical: none
(2) Anti-physical: Presence of 'Grey' aliens and
miniscule UFO craft capable of moving
through the body.
(3) Psychological: Manipulation of the client's
behavior to make him more physically re-
sponsive during sleep. Drawing upon un-
conscious images of idealized beauty to
clothe the entity's appearance and stimulate
sexual arousal.
(4) Physiological: Continuing sexual predation.
Swollen, discolored feet that defied medical
explanation.
(5) Psychic: Vision of a 'past-life memory' in-
volving the ritual pledging of the client to
the entities. Vision of the entity itself, its
larvae. Vision of healing serpents.
(6) Cultural: The information arising from this
case can be interpreted from within a num-
ber of different worldviews including: a)
psychopathology (e.g. dissociative identity
disorder (DID) / possession trance disorder
(PTD)); b) mainstream religious beliefs (it's
the work of Satan & his minions); c) neo-
shamanic 'perspectivism' 3 (De Castro
1998); d) UFO studies (interpreting posses-
sion as a sub-set of the alien abduction
phenomena).
We can appraise the variety of world views based on
their economy and generativity: a) Psychotherapy has
no one agreed approach to or understanding of such
anomalous experiences. One the one hand they are
seen as pathological symptoms of dissociation, alter-
natively as a result of temporary psychoses (e.g. Qi
Gung Psychotic Reaction) or as a 'spiritual emer-
gency' (Assagioli 1989). Based on their clinical expe-
rience a number of therapists and psychiatrists have
shifted towards a neo-shamanic interpretation of
spirit/entity possession (Fiore 1987; Modi 1988;
Sanderson 2003); b) The idea that it is the work of
Satan and his minions commits us to too much (neo-
Gnostic worldview, elaborate cosmologies and spiri-
tual hierarchies) and 'overdetermines' sensemaking
with respect to the available evidence; c) Neo-
shamanic perspectivism, "according to which the
world is inhabited by different sorts of subjects ...
human and non-human, which apprehend reality
from distinct points of view" (De Castro 1998) pro-
vides the most economical and generative option. We
can conceive such perspectivism as an exercise in
'worldmaking' (Overing 1998), an extension of the
world view of consensual reality to takes account of
the experiences reported worldwide by energy healers
and their clients. These include multiple additional
2 "There is another form of dark being. These are not created but spawned by the higher demonic beings and have no spark
of Light within. These dark thought-forms are robot-like entities who do the bidding of the dark ones" (Baldwin 1995,
p.341).
3 "humans see humans as humans, animals as animals and spirits (if they see them) as spirits; however animals (predators)
and spirits see humans as animals (as prey) to the same extent that animals (as prey) see humans as spirits or as animals
(predators)." de Castro 1998.
Vol. 4 No. 3 16
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
subjectivities (gods, angels, spirits, deceased persons,
other and higher dimensional beings) and a corre-
sponding increase in the sources of agency affecting
sentient life (spiritually and energetically as well as
mentally, emotionally and physically) interacting via
such distinctive roles as preserver/healer,
shapeshifter/ predator and prey.
The convergence of traditional folklore, cases of
'demonic possession', 'satanic ritual', 'UFOs' and
'alien abductions' have long been noted in the litera-
ture (Keel 1970; Vallee 1969; Vallee 1979; Baldwin
1998). The effects of these phenomena can be highly
reminiscent of the threefold process of initiation the
world over (Van Gennep 1960), and in particular of
the experience of liminality (Turner 1987), something
they share, along with a pronounced sexual element,
with the alien abduction phenomena (Thompson
1989). It is as though the phenomena themselves exist
in the conceptual overlap between these otherwise
diverse domains of discourse, taking on the imagery
and themes associated with them. Struggling with
such fluid, multi-level phenomena we are, so to speak,
victims of our own conceptual and linguistic prisons.
The consensual worldview tells us that what we
see is all there is. But this narrowness derives from
modernity's 'buffered self (Taylor 2007 p.27), the
self-segregated 'disenchanted' self (ibid p. 3 1-3 2)
emerging from a failure of empathic engagement.
This experience stands in contrast to that of the 'po-
rous self (ibid p. 38) that empathically (and psychi-
cally) breaches the walls separating itself from a
broader range experience. "The
enchanted:disenchanted distinction offers possibilities
for better describing the ways in which different cul-
tures experience this porosity. ... in some societi-
es — and arguably for some people in all societi-
es — lived experience does include the presence of
spirits, gods, etc., as well as the possibility of being
possessed by them. These might be accurately de-
scribed as 'enchanted' cultures / societies or peoples."
(Smith 2012, p.62 Note 7).
On a final note, my client's character changed
completely through the course of these eight months.
A completely different person emerged out of this
encounter with the numinous. From an expansive, in
your face, can-do presence emerged one graced with
sensitivity, spirituality and insight. This is, perhaps,
the outcome one would expect from having under-
gone the perils of such an initiation.
References
Amorth, Fr. G. (1999). An Exorcist Tells his Story. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press.
Assagioli, R. (1989). Self Realization and Psychologi-
cal Disturbances. In: Grof, S. & C. eds. (1989)
Spiritual Emergencies: When Personal Transformation
Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Tarcher.
Baldwin, W. (1995). Spirit Releasement Therapy: A Tech-
nique Manual. Terra Alta: Headline Books, 1995.
Baldwin, W. (1998). CE-VI: Close Encounters of the Pos-
session Kind. Terra Alta: Headline Books, 1998.
Bowie, F. (2012). Material and Immaterial Bodies: Ethno-
graphic Reflections on a Trance Seance. Available at:
http:/ /kcl. academia.edu/FionaBowie. [Accessed
on: 10 May 2013].
Cardena, E. (1989). Varieties of Possession Experi-
ence. Association for the Anthropological Study of Con-
sciousness. Volume 5, Number 2-3.
De Castro, EV (1998). Cosmological Deixis & Amer-
indian Perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal An-
thropological Institute. Vol. 4, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp.
469-488.
Fiore, E. (1987). The Unquiet Dead: A Psychologist Treats
Spirit Possession. New York: Ballantine Books,
1995.
Hunter, J. (2010). Ethnographic Encounters with the
Paranormal. Paranthropology. Vol. 1, No. 2 (Oct.,
2010).
Keel, J. (1970). UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. New
York: Putnam, 1970.
Modi, Dr. S. (1998). Remarkable Healings: A Psychiatrist
Discovers Unsuspected Roots of Mental and Physical
Illness. Newburyport: Hampton Roads Pub Co,
1998.
Overing, J. (1990). The Shaman as a Maker of
Worlds: Nelson Goodman in the Amazon. Man,
New Series, Vol. 25, No. 4. December. 1990, pp.
602-619.
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17
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Sanderson, Dr. A. (2003). The Case for Spirit Release.
Royal College of Psychiatry, Spirituality Special
Interest Group (SIG) Resources 2003. [Online].
Available from:
http:/ / www.rcpsych.ac.uk/ workinpsychiatry/ sp
ecialinterestgroups/ spirituality/ publicationsarchi
ve.aspx. [Accessed: 6 May 2013].
Smith, K. (2012). From Dividual and Individual
Selves to Porous Subjects. The Australian Journal of
Anthropology. (2012) 23, 50-64.
Taylor, C. (2007). A Secular Age. Harvard: The Belk-
nap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007.
Thompson, K. (1989). The UFO Encounter Experi-
ence as a Crisis of Transformation. In: Grof, S.
& C. eds. (1989) Spiritual Emergencies: When Per-
sonal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles:
Tarcher, 1989.
Turner, E. (1992). Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpreta-
tion of African Healing. Pennsylvania: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1992.
Turner, VW. (1987). Betwixt and Between: The
Liminal Period in Rites de Passage. In Mahdi,
LC, Foster, S. & Littie, M. Betwixt and Between:
Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation. Chi-
cago: Open Court, 1998.
Vallee, J. (1969). Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to
Flying Saucers. Washington: H. Regnery Co, 1969.
Vallee, J. (1979). Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts
and Cults. Brisbane: Daily Grail Publishing, 2008.
Vallee, JF. & Davis, EW. Incommensurability, Orthodoxy
and the Physics of High Strangeness: A 6-layer Model
for Anomalous Phenomena. Science, Religion and
Consciousness Conference at the University
Fernando Pessoa, Porto, Portugal, 24 October
2 00 3. [Online]. Available from:
http:/ / www.narcap.org/NewPages/ Associated_
Research.html. [Accessed: 10 May 2013].
Van Gennep, A. (1960). The Rites of Passage. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1961.
Biography
I o,
<
Peter Mark Adams is
a BA Hons Philosophy
graduate with a spe-
cial research interest
in altered states of
consciousness, epis-
temology and the phi-
losophy of science.
Peter is a professional
energy worker and
healer specializing in
Rebirthing breathwork,
energy psychology and
mindfulness meditation. Peter is the author of "Al-
tered States / Parallel Worlds' a book length essay
to coincide with appearances at the "Brain to Con-
sciousness Conference', Istanbul, May 2011. Peter
has just finished a new book "The Healing Field:
energy, consciousness and transformation' dealing
with the broad range of anomalous experiences
that occur during energy based healing. This book
will be available from Summer, 2013. Peter's other
essays are available at:
www.petermarkadams.com. Peter can be reached
at: petermarkadams@gmail.com.
Journal of Exceptional
Experiences & Psychology
Inaugural issue now available
www.exceptionalpsychology.com
Vol. 4 No. 3
18
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Recognising the Voice of God
Tanya M. Luhrmann
I know what it is like to hear God speak. I am not
a Christian. I am not even sure what I mean,
speaking for myself, by the word 'God.' But for ten
years I have been doing anthropological research
among the sort of evangelical Christians who ex-
perience God as interacting with them. They be-
lieve that prayer is a conversation in which they
talk to God and God talks back. They will say that
God 'told' them to do something — to talk to the
stranger next to them on the bus, or move to Los
Angeles. To other Christians, this can seem in-
comprehensible, and even dangerous.
People often spoke to me about the first time
they had recognized God's voice. Usually, this
happened in prayer ministry. They realized that an
apparently random thought or mental image was
uncannily relevant to the person they were praying
over, and they thought that God was telling them
what the person they were praying for needed to
hear. One woman remembered the first time this
happened when she prayed for a stranger. 'I didn't
know what to say. I was really scared. And then, I
remember, I saw something. It wasn't a vivid pic-
ture. It was more like my words described the pic-
ture more than I saw clearly what the picture was.
When I described it to the person I was praying
for, he just started to cry. Then he explained why
he was crying, and with that information, I was
able to pray for him more. It was the most power-
ful thing.'
Once people began to feel confident that they
heard God speak to them as they prayed for other
people, they began to experience God speaking to
them about their own lives. They would talk to
God with their inner voice, about something that
was vexing them, and they would wait for his re-
sponse — some inner word or image that would
give them guidance. Sometimes it came immedi-
ately; sometimes it took time. They call this prac-
tice 'listening'
What I saw was that they were learning to pay
attention to their inner world in a different way.
The church taught that words from God should
Vol. 4 No. 3
feel as if they 'pop' into the mind, a spontaneous
break from the flow of thought.
Let us put to one side the question of whether
God is really speaking, and examine the practice
anthropologically. The first thing to notice is that
the practice takes advantage of what we might call
the 'texture' of mental experience. We have
thoughts that are more startling and surprising
than others; thoughts that seem a piece of the psy-
chic river of awareness and thoughts that seem to
come out of nowhere. These Christians treat these
contours as significant.
But they do more than attend to thought dif-
ferently. The church teaches congregants to pay
attention only to certain of these striking
thoughts — to good thoughts, thoughts that are the
kinds of things God should say. That is, those
thoughts should be relevant, wise and loving. ('God
does not tell you to hurt yourself,' people said.) You
should feel good when you have them. When you
hear God correctly, you should feel peace, and if
you didn't feel peaceful, it wasn't God.
Doing this changes you. One man explained to
me how much his experience of God had altered
since coming to the church. 'God's voice is like a
fuzzy radio station, 95.2, 94.9, which needs more
tuning. You're picking up the song, and it's not so
clear sometimes. It's clearer to me now' That was
why I say that I think I know what it is like to hear
God speak. I worshipped with these charismatic
evangelicals. I prayed with them. I read their
books. I sought to pay attention to my inner world
the way they did. As I did so, I began to have ex-
periences like the ones they reported. I remember
with clarity the first time it happened. I was trying
to compose a note to someone — one of those
complicated notes you need to send to someone
you don't know well, when you want to be per-
sonal but not forward. I fretted about the note off
and on for a few days. Then suddenly the sen-
tences just came to me. I didn't feel that I had cho-
sen them. They came to me and I wrote them
down and they were perfect. To some extent, the
19
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
practice works. My ethnographic and experimen-
tal work confirm this again and again.
Religion demands of its followers that they
understand reality to be different from the material
world they live within — more fair, more good. It
demands that they use their minds to present real-
ity as different and as better. It is worth recogniz-
ing that this is as much skill as belief, a knowing
how (to borrow from the philosopher Gilbert Ryle)
as a knowing that. The skill is probably at the
heart of what makes psychotherapy work when it
works, and probably what makes placebo effective.
It's a different way of thinking about God than the
science-religion wars suggest, and possibly less di-
visive.
Biography
Tanya Marie Luhr-
mann is the Watkins
University Professor
in the Stanford An-
thropology Depart-
ment. Her books in-
clude Persuasions of
the Witch's Craft,
(Harvard, 1989); The
Good Parsi (Harvard
1996); Of Two Minds
(Knopf 2000) and
When God Talks Back (Knopf 2012). In general, her
work focuses on the way that ideas held in the
mind come to seem externally real to people, and
the way that ideas about the mind affect mental
experience. One of her recent project compares the
experience of hearing distressing voices in India
and in the United States.
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
From Sleep Paralysis to Spiritual Experience
An Interview With David Hufford
John W. Morehead
David Hufford has been pursuing research on the
"Old Hag" sleep paralysis phenomenon for quite
some time. Perhaps his best-known work on this is
The Terror That comes in the Night: An Experience- Centered
Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press; 2 nd ed, 1989). Huf-
ford joined the faculty of the Penn State College of
Medicine in 1974 in the Department of Behavioral
Science. When he retired in 2007 he held a Univer-
sity Professorship and was chair of the Department of
Humanities with appointments in Departments of
Neural and Behavioral Science, Family & Commu-
nity Medicine, and Psychiatry. Hufford is now Uni-
versity Professor Emeritus at Penn State College of
Medicine, Senior Fellow for Spirituality at the Sam-
ueli Institute, and Adjunct Professor of Religious
Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Hufford is
also a founding member of the Editorial Boards of
Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing and Spirituality
in Clinical Practice.
John Morehead: David, thank you for your will-
ingness to be a part of this interview. Your research
on the sleep paralysis phenomenon is well known.
How did you come to develop a personal interest in
it, and how did your research on the "Old Hag" phe-
nomenon in Newfoundland perhaps begin this proc-
ess on an academic level?
David Hufford: That, John, is a very good ques-
tion. It goes to the very center of my professional in-
terests, values and goals. In December of 1963 I was
a college sophomore. One night I went to bed early
in my off campus room. I had just completed the last
of my final exams for the term, and I was tired. I
went to bed about 6 o'clock, looking forward confi-
dently to a long and uninterrupted night's sleep. In
that I was mistaken.
About 2 hours later I was awakened by the sound
of my door being opened, and footsteps approached
the bed. I was lying on my back and the door was
Vol. 4 No. 3
straight ahead of me. But the room was pitch dark, so
when I opened my eyes I could see nothing. I as-
sumed a friend was coming to see if I wanted to go to
dinner. I tried to turn on the light beside my bed, but
I couldn't move or speak. I was paralyzed. The foot-
steps came to the side of my bed, and I felt the mat-
tress go down as someone climbed onto the bed, knelt
on my chest and began to strangle me. I really
thought that I was dying. But far worse than the feel-
ings of being strangled were the sensations associated
with what was on top of me. I had an overwhelming
impression of evil, and my reaction was primarily re-
vulsion. Whatever was on my chest was not just de-
structive; it was absolutely disgusting. I shrank from
it.
I struggled to move, but it was as though I could
not find the "controls." Somehow I no longer knew
how to move. And then I did move, I think my hand
was first, and then my whole body. I leaped out of
bed, heart racing, and turned on the light to find the
room empty. I ran downstairs where my landlord sat
watching TV "Did someone go past you just now?"
He looked at me like I was crazy and said "no."
I never forgot that experience, but I told no one
about it for the next eight years. There was no ques-
tion of interpreting this experience, locating it within
my cultural frame. There was no place for it there.
Dream? I knew, absolutely knew, I had been awake.
Hallucination? I was sure that I was not crazy, but I
also knew this would not be convincing to others.
The insane are, according to stereotype, the last to
know. So the experience just hung there, uncon-
nected. Disturbing.
In 1970 I traveled to Newfoundland, Canada, to
do my doctoral dissertation fieldwork. I went to study
supernatural belief. I was probably influenced by my
bizarre experience, but I was also responding to a
larger interest. In graduate school at the University of
Pennsylvania I had been taught that supernatural
beliefs are non-rational, unsupportable by proper rea-
soning, and that they are non-empirical, lacking any
sound observational basis. This seemed too sweeping
21
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
and a bit arrogant, so in my research I proposed to
ask whether traditional beliefs might have some ra-
tional and empirical elements. I went to Newfound-
land because it is isolated and has a strong traditional
culture, the kind of place where I had been taught
one might find remnants of pre -modern belief. It
proved to be a good choice.
While doing my research I taught at Newfound-
land's Memorial University in the Folklore Depart-
ment and worked in the department's extensive ar-
chive. Almost immediately I found the Old Hag, al-
though at the moment it happened it felt more as if
the Old Hag had found me — again. When you "have
the Old Hag," Newfoundlanders said, you awoke to
find yourself unable to move. The hag, a terrifying
something, could be heard coming, footsteps ap-
proaching your room. The hag would enter your
room and press you, crushing the breath out of you.
If the experience is not interrupted they said it could
end in death.
The Old Hag presented me with a dilemma. I
had been taught that stories about supernatural expe-
riences confirming local traditions are produced by
cultural influences, what I have called The Cultural
Source Hypothesis (CSH). But the Old hag had come
into my room in 1963 out of a cultural void. Tradi-
tion says, "We believe this because it has happened to
us." Modern scholarship reverses this and says, "You
think this happens because you believe it." My di-
lemma: I could explain the Old Hag based on cul-
tural processes that confirm local cultural tradi-
tions — although I knew that my own prior experience
flatly contradicted such explanations. Or I could de-
velop an entirely new kind of explanation.
This all amounted to a stunning discovery. I now
knew something about the Old Hag tradition that no
one else seemed to know. But I was in no better posi-
tion to proclaim this publicly than I had been to talk
about my experience in 1963. I did not want to say,
"Hey, that happened to me too! So that tells us that....
Trust me on this!" Personal experience lends authen-
ticity and expertise to scholarly work, when the expe-
rience is granted to be real — experiences of illness, of
being in prison, of being an artist, of gender, of race,
of all sorts of recognized categories of experience.
But contested experiences have the opposite effect;
they are seen as pure bias, "Oh, he's a believer (and
therefore not be trusted)." If I were to place my expe-
rience and my Newfoundland findings within a sensi-
ble cultural frame, it would have to be a frame partly
of my own making. In that way the personal became
professional, academic.
Vol. 4 No. 3
John Morehead: How has your academic discipline
of folklore studies been important in your under-
standing of the phenomenon? And what do you think
about the use of other disciplines, like anthropology,
to help us understand it?
David Hufford: I entered the discipline of folklore
in the mid-1960s because it included "folk belief" as
a recognized topic for research, and because it had a
populist orientation. In general it showed great re-
spect for the views of ordinary people. In art, archi-
tecture, oral literature, agricultural methods, etcetera,
folklore stood up for the worth of ordinary culture.
But I quickly discovered in graduate school that un-
like other cultural genres, folk belief and respect for
the knowledge claims of ordinary people occupied
structurally antithetical positions in the discipline.
Although folk music scholars did not judge by the
standards of classical composition, folk belief schol-
ars did, in fact, judge "superstition" by its conformity
to current scientific opinion. Considering that most
folk beliefs had never been subjected to systematic
scientific research this seemed pure, unjustified eth-
nocentrism. My anthropology training presented a
related but more modern problem.
The Boasian turn from blatant ethnocentrism to
a sort of protective hermeneuticism offered the kind
of patronizing acceptance that a psychotherapist of-
fers to a psychotic patient: I believe that your halluci-
nations are real to you. Finding internal consistency
and rejecting evaluative comparisons to external
knowledge, folk belief was accorded "its own logic."
This fit well with the 20 th century scholarly resistance
to comparative method. The post-modern turn re-
jected not only scientific reduction but also all other
efforts to obtain objective knowledge through com-
parison. Scientific positivism reduced all sorts of folk
beliefs to cultural fictions. Folklore and anthropology,
in fact the social sciences and the humanities in gen-
eral, were of little assistance as I wrestled with the
"Old Hag." In fact, with regard to "folk belief" I
came to see these academic disciplines as functioning
to protect modernity from being challenged by the
knowledge of other cultures and times. Ironically, this
is similar to the function of positivism, but it offers
the advantage of apparently respecting the knowl-
edge claims it rejects.
John Morehead: Can you summarize the basic
elements that define the sleep paralysis phenomenon?
22
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
David Hufford: Sleep paralysis (SP) refers to the
loss of voluntary movement either during the period
just before sleep (hypnagogic stage or sleep onset) or
just after (hypnopompic stage). The paralysis is pro-
duced by a cholinergic mechanism in the reticular
activating system in the brain stem that functions to
prevent the sleeper from physically carrying out ac-
tions occurring in dreams. This atonia-producing
mechanism is a normal feature of rapid eye-
movement sleep. In SP this mechanism intrudes into
wakefulness. This might suggest that the "intruder"
experience of SP is "just dreaming" while awake.
The problem is this: dreams vary greatly from subject
to subject and over time, and their content tends to
reflect inputs from the dreamer's waking life, together
with aspects of the sensed environment (e.g., in a hot
room one may dream of a tropical environment).
The "Old Hag" is very different. It is as if dreamers
all of over the world and throughout history report
the same dream, and that repeated content does not re-
quire the subject's prior knowledge! Furthermore the
contents do not reflect the range of possible features
that could arise from waking consciousness during
REM sleep, rather being restricted to a very narrow
spectrum; e.g., people do not experience the ceiling
falling on them or terrorists entering their room, ei-
ther of which would conform to the pressure and
immobility of the experience.
John Morehead: In the 1980s you wrote The Terror
That Comes in the Night: An Experience- Centered Study of
Supernatural Assault Traditions. What types of conclu-
sions did you come to about the phenomenon at that
time?
David Hufford: My conclusions were data driven,
and my data was especially rich, ranging from an-
thropological and historical documentation to phe-
nomenology to medical and neurophysiological find-
ings, because I employed mixed methods, including
ethnographic interviews, surveys, and literature re-
view. The ethnographic interviewing was phenome-
nologically oriented, aimed at developing a detailed
description of the range of perceptual features of SP.
These interviews began with open-ended questions
such as, "Please tell me all that you recall about your
experience." No questions probed for the features
with which I was familiar; e.g., I never asked, "Was
there a presence in the room with you?" My research
design predicted that "the Old Hag" could be ex-
plained by the cultural source hypothesis as cultural
elaborations of SP (although my own experience had
Vol. 4 No. 3
already shown me that this was not possible), and
asked whether objective findings conformed to that
prediction. They did not.
My interviews revealed a stable phenomenologi-
cal pattern very similar to what I had experienced in
college. The surveys showed that this pattern did not
depend on cultural input or prior knowledge of any
kind. The literature review documented reports con-
sistent with SP in cultures all over the world and
throughout history, although such reports had not
previously been connected with SP The terms used
for description in different traditions were obviously
culturally determined, such as "Old Hag," the Mara
(Tillhagen 1969) of Sweden, the da chor (Tobin &
Friedman 1983), dab coj, poj ntxoog (Munger 1986), or
dab tsog (Adler 1991) in Southeast Asia, the sitting
ghost or bei Guai chaak (being pressed by a ghost)
(Emmons 1 982) in China, kanashibari in Japan, and
many more from around the world and throughout
history refer to the same event characterized by pa-
ralysis, the conviction of wakefulness before or
emerging from sleep. These cultural terms were asso-
ciated with a variety of other details such as soft
shuffling footsteps and the shadow man' or misty
presence, regardless of cultural context. A detailed
review of modern scientific knowledge of SP found
neither any awareness of this distinctive phenome-
nological pattern, nor any mechanisms that would
account for it.
So, my conclusions in The Terror stemmed from
the way that my research contradicted the Cultural
Source Hypothesis as an explanation of "the Old
Hag" and similar traditions. In its place I found that
this phenomenon fit, instead, the Experiential Source
Hypothesis: (1) many traditions of supernatural as-
sault around the world refer the phenomenon known
as sleep paralysis in modern sleep research, (2) scien-
tific knowledge of SP lacks knowledge of its cross-
culturally consistent phenomenology and has no ade-
quate explanation for that pattern, (3) the cross-
contextual perceptual patterning is what reason leads
us to expect of accurate reports from independent
witnesses, therefore (4) traditions of supernatural as-
sault that contain the SP pattern are empirically
based and rationally derived.
John Morehead: Of course, your research contin-
ued beyond the 1980s. How did this develop, and
how did your understandings develop by 2005 when
you wrote your essay "Sleep Paralysis as Spiritual Ex-
perience" for the journal Transcultural Psychology?
23
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
David Hufford: In 1974 I finished my Ph.D., re-
turned from Newfoundland and accepted the posi-
tion of Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at
Penn State's College of Medicine. I was offered this
position based on the stance I developed in my doc-
toral dissertation, Folklore Studies Applied to Health (Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania 1974), which was focused on
folk belief. I explored ways that the study of folk be-
lief could serve medical research and care. Chapter 6
was devoted to the Old Hag and SP. I saw two major
connections to medicine: (1) belief is a major deter-
minant of health behaviour (from patients' beliefs
about etiology and treatment to doctors' beliefs about
patients), and (2) the fact that in the 20 th century
medicine, psychiatry in particular, had provided prac-
tically all explanations for "folk belief" (meaning false
belief traditionally supported), especially experiential
claims in support of folk belief, through psychopa-
thology (wish fulfilment, unconscious sexual forces,
delusions, hallucinations, etc.). The journey I em-
barked on in my Newfoundland research was per-
fectly suited to the medical context, although in a
somewhat perverse way. I accepted the appointment
to work to improve medical care and diagnosis, but to
do that I would have to directly address the harm
done by medical misunderstandings. Ironically, folk-
lore and anthropology (et al.) had been complicit in
those misunderstandings. So, I went to medicine to
subvert the received worldviews of modern intellec-
tuals, in order to advance medical care. The Terror was
a major part of that program.
A central aspect of my subversive agenda was to
pursue the extension of the Experiential Source Hy-
pothesis beyond SP to other spiritual experiences. By
spiritual I mean whatever refers to spirit, which in Eng-
lish means the immaterial part of a living being. Part
of my subversion has involved constantly working
against the academic misuse of the term spiritual to
refer to whatever gives one meaning in life. That
definition, rooted in Christian existential theology (for
example, the work of Paul Tillich), is a misappropria-
tion of the natural language word, reflecting the
philosophical and theological inclinations of many
academics. But it is a false and confusing characteri-
zation of the concept in common English. You
should also note that spiritual in this traditional, non-
material sense is at the heart of the word supernatural.
The words are not identical in meaning, but believing
in one entails believing in the other.
Anyway, in 1974 I had wondered whether SP
with a presence was the only such anomalous experi-
ence giving rise to supernatural folk belief — belief in
Vol. 4 No. 3
spirits being the main such belief. Beginning in 1974 I
searched for broader implications, lessons that New-
foundland's "Old Hag" might teach us about other
supernatural traditions. Could other supernatural
beliefs also arise from experience rather than vice-
versa? In 1974, the year I returned from Newfound-
land, Raymond Moody published Life After Life (1 st
edition, Atlanta: Mockingbird Books), "Actual case
histories that reveal that there is life after death."
Moody coined the term "near-death experience" and
described the NDE as common among resuscitands.
The immediate skeptical response, especially from the
medical community, was that this could not be com-
mon or "we would have known about long ago!" My
SP work showed me the flaw in this reasoning, and a
little fieldwork quickly showed me that the NDE
seemed to be another case of experientially based
supernatural belief. Subsequent research reporting
NDEs from other cultures and other times showed
that it fit the Experiential Source Hypothesis in the
same way that SP with a presence does. At about the
same time I found the work of W. Dewi Rees, M.D.,
a Welsh physician whose study published in The Brit-
ish Medical Journal (1971) showed that visits from the
spirit of a deceased loved one are common among
the bereaved. Contrary to contemporary psychiatric
thinking, which had labeled such experiences symp-
toms of pathological grieving, Rees showed that these
visits (now called "after death contacts," ADCs) were
consistently associated with less indications of depres-
sion and better resolution of grief! Continued re-
search over the past 30 years has confirmed Rees'
early conclusions, and the characterization of the
experiences in the psychiatric literature has changed
dramatically.
During my 30 plus years at the College of Medi-
cine I made the study of modern resistance to the
facts of what I came to call "extraordinary spiritual
experiences" (ESE's, as opposed to ordinary experi-
ences interpreted spiritually), as much a part of my
research as the experiences themselves. I found the
cultural context within which the experiences occur,
dominated not by science per se, but by materialistic
philosophical beliefs assumed to be inextricable from
science, to be essential to the study of the experi-
ences. Among my conclusions has been the convic-
tion that science and well-established scientific
knowledge do not contradict "folk beliefs," either
those about spirits or folk medical beliefs such as
those that underlie herbalism in the treatment of dis-
ease. I realized that what was at issue was the cultural
authority of science, that that authority had been
24
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
excessively extended over the past century or so. This
did not amount to a disagreement with either the
scientific method or the well-established findings of
science. In fact, I came to believe that what was
needed to begin to appreciate the remarkable knowl-
edge of folk traditions was better science, more rigor-
ous and less biased.
John Morehead: What are the various interpreta-
tions that are brought to the phenomenon in the cul-
tures in which it is found?
David Hufford: That's a really interesting question.
There is variety, but a constrained variety. The inter-
pretations center, as you might imagine, on the in-
truder. In almost all cases this entity is described as
evil or at least threatening. It may be interpreted as a
sorcerer or a ghost or demon or some other kind of
supernatural, such as a vampire. In many locations it
is assumed that more than one kind of creature can
do this, such as both sorcerers and ghosts. The defini-
tive characteristics of these categories, of course, are
not unambiguously presented in the SP experience. If
the intruder is recognized as a particular living per-
son (which seems rare) then it is understandable that
it will be interpreted as a sorcerer. If the attack is sex-
ual, which seems infrequent but it does happen, and
if there is a term such as incubus or succubus, that
will be applied. If the attack occurs in a house be-
lieved to be haunted, which is common, then the in-
truder is generally assumed to be a ghost. When fea-
tures of an attack do not obviously suggest one kind
of entity or another, then local categories fill in, such
as the aswang (Tagalog) in the Philippines. This re-
markable consistency and similarity across cultures is
a product, obviously, of the robust and consistent
cross-cultural pattern of the phenomenology of SP.
John Morehead: Let's focus specifically on how the
phenomenon is interpreted in Western cultures where
secularism, advances in the neurosciences, and skep-
ticism toward religious or spiritual experiences, are
prevalent. How have paranormal or other spiritual
interpretations been received in this context?
David Hufford: The conventional view in anthro-
pology, folklore and other disciplines has always been
that all experience is somewhat ambiguous, so the
values and assumptions resident in one's culture will
determine one's interpretation of events. This is the
central understanding of the Cultural Source Hy-
pothesis (CSH), and it extends even beyond interpre-
Vol. 4 No. 3
tation to perception in many theories (e.g., the
Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis). As you note, the conven-
tional view in the modern academic world is philo-
sophical materialism, especially with regard to mat-
ters of spiritual belief and religion, which are as-
sumed to be very ambiguous. But ironically, the Cul-
tural Source Hypothesis accounts for the academic
interpretation of SP, not for the interpretations found
among most that have experienced SP! Despite evi-
dence to the contrary most academics assume that
somehow prior learning, presumably through cultural
processes, yields expectations that produce the con-
tent of all sorts of spiritual experiences. This is what
has been called the universal hermeneutic approach;
it is illustrated by the influential work of philosopher
Steven Katz. Katz, who was most concerned with
"mystical experiences," insisted that visionaries only
experience what they have been taught to experience.
Contrary to modern intellectual assumptions,
most subjects in the modern Western world, the disen-
chanted world to use Weber's term, interpret SP events
as spiritual or "paranormal." This is because the
events are, in fact, minimally ambiguous. And the
available interpretations for an intruder who can walk
through walls and paralyze its victim (etcetera) are
very few: hallucination or something spiritual or
"paranormal." The SP consciousness is very lucid,
unlike dream consciousness, and many of the obser-
vations (e.g. the physical environment) made in this
consciousness are veridical. This clear sense of reality
warrants this interpretation for most subjects. Of
course, there is also the fact that we now know that
the "disenchantment" of modern consciousness has
been greatly over-rated!
John Morehead: In the conclusion of your Transcul-
tural Psychiatry essay you state, "that there is nothing
specific within our scientific knowledge of [sleep pa-
ralysis] that contradicts spirit interpretations." Given
our growing understanding of the brain through the
neurosciences, can you expand a bit on what you
mean and how there may be connections here be-
tween scientific knowledge of the brain in religious
experience and a spiritual interpretation of that ex-
perience?
David Hufford: Another good question! In consid-
ering the relationship between scientific knowledge
and spiritual belief we need to be scrupulous about
the meaning of the term contradiction. Two proposi-
tions are contradictory only if they negate each other,
that is, if it is the case that if Proposition 1 is true
25
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Proposition 2 must be false, not just that Proposition 1
challenges Proposition 2 or suggests that Proposition 2
may be wrong. The scientific proposition "that the
Earth is billions of years old" negates the Young
Earth Creationist proposition "that the Earth is 6,000
years old." If one of these propositions is true, the
other must be false. Logical analysis requires that we
understand the meaning of the terms involved.
Therefore, the hermeneutical idea that "6,000 years"
in scriptural terms might mean something very dif-
ferent from what we mean by it today removes the
contradiction but makes the proposition rather mean-
ingless.
A proposition that would negate the traditional
interpretation of SP would be "that there are no im-
material spirits." If that were true, it would negate
the traditional idea "that the shadow intruder in SP is
a spirit of some kind." These propositions would con-
tradict each other. But "that there are no spirits" is
not a scientific proposition. There are no scientific
experiments, nor can we easily imagine one, that
would establish this proposition. If it were true "that
the intruder in SP is a spirit" that would not contra-
dict any scientifically established knowledge. It would
not be relevant to the mechanistic REM explanation
of the cholinergic "switch" for SP atonia. On the
other hand, the knowledge that the SP phenomenol-
ogy is independent of cultural context does contra-
dict the conventional social science use of the Cul-
tural Source Hypothesis (CSH) to explain SP. But this
use of the CSH has no valid empirical base, being
more a reflection of ideology than a scientifically de-
rived conclusion.
Scientific method and scientific knowledge about
sleep are very useful in understanding SP, but they do
not include some crucial information that is widely
available in folk tradition, and that can be checked
empirically. In this sense the two traditions are com-
plementary. But brain science at present no more ex-
plains the consistent phenomenology of SP than folk
tradition explains its neurophysiology.
Common spirit experiences do not show that the
Earth is flat, that germs do not cause disease, etc.
They do not contradict and are not contradicted by
modern knowledge. The observation that many peo-
ple with modern knowledge reject these beliefs does
not constitute a contradiction. Much more common
than contradiction is the idea that modern knowledge
makes supernatural belief unnecessary by providing
superior explanations for the same observations. This
is the argument from parsimony, or Occam's Razor.
This claim has its roots in the old notion of super-
Vol. 4 No. 3
natural belief as consisting of primitive explanations
for observations of natural phenomena.
The kind of direct perceptual "spirit experi-
ences" reported in SP (and NDEs, ADCs, et cetera) do
not inherently offer an account of any natural phe-
nomena. If they did there would be the possibility of
contradicting scientific knowledge. What they do of-
fer is an account of some of the characteristics of
spirits and their relationship to humans. All conven-
tional theories of such experiences treat them as hal-
lucinations or illusions and rely on assumptions of
cultural sources to account for their patterning, be-
cause no psychological theories exist that explain (or
even acknowledge the existence of) complex halluci-
nations having a broad, cross-cultural, perceptual
stability. However, these experiences cannot be ac-
counted for by cultural models because of their cross-
cultural distribution. Therefore, even on grounds of
parsimony, modern knowledge does not conflict at all
with the most basic beliefs that follow from such ex-
periences.
John Morehead: In your research you have noted
similarities between the sleep paralysis phenomenon
and out-of-body and UFO abduction experiences.
Are there any similarities or parallels to other things,
and what does this tell you about sleep paralysis?
David Hufford: One partial exception to the
spiritual/ "paranormal" interpretation, arising from
modern ideas, is the notion that these events are
"screen memories" for alien abduction. Contrary to
what some researchers have claimed, this remains a
minority interpretation, and it relies on the spurious
idea that these "screen memories" conceal a forgot-
ten scenario that can be retrieved through hypnotic
regression. The prevalence and distribution of SP
with a presence, historically and cross-culturally is
entirely at odds with this idea. The same is true for
the tragic error of treating SP as a screen memory for
repressed memories of sexual abuse, or as the root
cause of Sudden Unexplained Nocturnal Death Syn-
drome (SUNDS) among Southeast Asian men.
The similarities in these cases come largely from
the outside observer rather than the subject. In both
alien abduction and sexual abuse scenarios the pres-
ence of a threatening intruder in the bedroom is
similar. The pressure of someone lying on you may
be similar to sexual abuse, and the feeling of leaving
your body, present in a substantial minority of SP
events, resonates with the alien abduction scenario. In
SUNDS the impression of impending death common
26
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
in SP is a similarity. But these are tenuous similarities.
In SUNDS, for example, the subject actually dies, but
all epidemiological and medical evidence indicates
that people simply do not die from SP. Also, SP
OBEs do not involve trips to alien space ships, unless
the SP experiencer is subject to extensive interroga-
tion under hypnosis by a UFO researcher. And only a
small — but important — fraction of SP cases involve
sexual aspects. These and other misattributions of SP
result from widespread ignorance of SP, and they can
be VERY destructive. I have dealt with them at some
length in my Transcultural Psychiatry article.
What we learn from the erroneous connections of
SP with a variety of unrelated phenomena is that
even robust, consistentiy stable classes of spiritual
experience will be the subject of extreme efforts at
assimilation to interpretations that seem more "mod-
ern" than the common understanding of subjects.
Even alien abduction, as unconventional as it is, pro-
vides a modern sounding account in contrast to
ghosts! These reinterpretations of SP are not so dif-
ferent from the interpretation of near-death experi-
ences as delirium or after death contacts as hallucina-
tions of pathological grieving. In all cases the fit of
the data to the interpretation is poor, but the goal
seems to be modernization rather than objective ac-
curacy.
John Morehead: In your Transcultural Psychology es-
say you discuss "the persistence of spirit beliefs in
modern society despite the cultural and social forces
arrayed against them." You argue that this may be
accounted for due to "transcendent, spiritual experi-
ences." How do you see sleep paralysis functioning as
a "core spirit experience?"
David Hufford: By core spiritual experiences I mean
perceptual experiences that (a) refer intuitively to spirits
without inference or retrospective interpretation, (b)
form distinct classes with stable perceptual patterns,
(c) occur independently of a subject's prior beliefs,
knowledge or intention (psychological set), and (d) are
normal (i.e., not products of obvious psychopathol-
ogy)-
Here perceptual experiences means episodes of
awareness that subjectively appear to be observations
rather than inferences or emotional states. Most SP
experiences (about 80% in my survey data) include a
"spirit (that is, an apparentiy non-physical) intruder,"
and many develop into complex scenarios of assault.
It should be obvious, then, why I consider this a
spiritual experience: it usually involves a spirit (the
Vol. 4 No. 3
intruder), and when SP produces an OBE it presents
the experience of being a spirit. Despite the typically
ambiguous meanings of spirituality so common among
intellectuals today, lexical research has overwhelm-
ingly shown that in English for many centuries spiritu-
ality refers to spirits. By core spiritual experience, I
mean that such experiences provide a central (core)
empirical foundation from which some supernatural
beliefs develop by inference. You may recall that at
the beginning of my career I set out to ask whether
traditional supernatural beliefs might have some ra-
tional and empirical elements. The discovery of core
spiritual experiences answers that question with a
clear yes.
John Morehead: Are there any new trajectories in
your research in this phenomenon? What can we look
forward to in your future work in this area?
David Hufford: Remarkably it seems my original
trajectory remains both viable and productive. I still
want to assess and understand the empirical and ra-
tional grounds of widespread spiritual beliefs. I want
to find additional core spiritual experiences. For ex-
ample, in 1985 I collaborated with Genevieve Foster
in the writing of her memoir of a particular kind of
mystical experience (The World Was Flooded with Light,
University of Pittsburgh Press). There is reason to
believe her experience is a member of another core
experience set, but we have very little relevant data. I
would love to pursue that. I am trying to understand
the common intellectual resistance to traditional
spiritual belief both from the materialist side and
from the theological side. Keep in mind, even though
core spiritual experiences are found in most religious
traditions around the world, they are either absent or
severely constrained within modern, mainstream re-
ligion. I also want to understand fully the role of
medicine, especially psychiatry, in stigmatizing and
suppressing this topic in the modern world through
psychopathological theories.
Out of each of those strands, my central desire is
to facilitate a change in the modern understanding of
spirituality, a change that needs to reform both sci-
ence (including medicine) and religion. A change that
recognizes that Weber's disenchantment of the world
did not, in fact happen, and for good reason. The
world we live in is far more interesting than we have
been taught. The spiritual aspect of the world de-
mands the attention of educated and sophisticated
thinkers, not the kind of anti-empirical dogmatic de-
nial of human spirituality that we see today. The pub-
27
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
lie needs to know that if they have a near-death expe-
rience or a visit from a deceased loved one that they
have good reason to feel the consolation that comes
naturally with such experiences, and not the anxiety
imposed by modern sanctions against spiritual expe-
rience. They need to know that if they have a scary
experience of SP it does not mean they are crazy OR
that they can't tell the difference between waking and
sleeping Other cultures throughout the world have
knowledge that helps to deal with SP. We should not
be the only ones left in ignorance. The ignorant and
irrational rejection of spirituality so common among
intellectuals in modern society makes the public vul-
nerable to all sorts of cult claims and religious ex-
tremism. I would like to contribute to changing these
things. I am far from alone in this, and I see the
change coming. I hope to live long enough to con-
tribute to reaching the turning point!
Biographies
John W. Morehead has an MA in
intercultural studies from Salt Lake
Theological Seminary. He applies
his academic background in religion
and cultural studies to his work in
popular culture. In this area he has
taught courses in theology and film,
and contributed to various works
including Halos & Avatars, Butcher
Knives & Body Counts, Horror Films
of the 1990s, an essay on Matrixism
for The Brill Handbook of Hyper-
Real Religion, and served as as co-
editor and contributor to The Undead and Theology. He sits
on the editorial board of GOLEM: The Journal of Religion
and Monsters. In addition to his pop culture interests, he
also conducts research, writes, and lectures on new relig-
ions, world religions, and interreligious dialogue. John also
edits TheoFantastique (www.theofantastique.com).
David Hufford is Professor and
Director at the Doctors Kienle
Center for Humanistic Medicine at
the Penn State College of Medi-
cine (Hershey), where he has ap-
pointments in Medical Humanities,
Behavioral Science, and Family
and Community Medicine. He is
Adjunct Professor in the Program
of Religious Studies at Penn and
is currently providing leadership in
an initiative to establish a center
on Spirituality and Health in Penn's
School of Medicine. His primary
research interests, which incorpo-
rate perspectives on applied folklore and theory, are in the
areas of alternative health systems and folk belief and
practice. His book, The Terror That Comes In The Night,
explores the experiential basis for belief in the supernatu-
ral. David teaches courses on the Ethnography of Belief,
Vol. 4 No. 3
Folk and Unorthodox Health Systems, and Human Diver-
sity in Healthcare.
Publications:
and
dicologu
EDITED B?
KIM PAFFENROTH
JOHN W. MOREHEAD
https://wipfandstock.com/store/The Undead and
Theology/
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
The Experiencing Brain
Charles D. Laughlin
Sociocultural anthropologists typically ignore the
brain. Whole books on anthropological theory are
still written, many dealing with psychological issues,
but which make no mention of the neurosciences, or
neuroanthropology for that matter (e.g., Moberg
2013). This is a curious form of neglect considering
that everything anthropologists talk about with re-
spect to culture, enculturation and acculturation per-
tains to activities of neurophysiological systems. As a
consequence of this neglect, anthropology fails to
utilize the rich body of research that could inform
them about their scope of inquiry. Among other
things, any act of consciousness cannot be any more
complex, any more intelligent, any more creative or
insightful than the neurophysiology mediating the
act. We cannot perceive anything that our senses
cannot detect. We cannot understand more than our
brain can model. We cannot experience anything that
our brain cannot structure and comprehend. We
cannot process information that our brain is not de-
signed and prepared to process. The preparedness to
experience is fundamentally 'wired-in.' Indeed, every
moment of our stream of experience is being medi-
ated by the cells in our brain that originate as inher-
ited neural structures (neurognosis, or neurognostic
structures; see Laughlin, McManus and d'Aquili
1990) which become altered and conditioned 'so-
cially' in such a way that the experience or physical
act can be produced and understood in local cultural
terms.
The Brain World
In short, we experience between our ears. Our world
of experience is constituted by and occurs entirely
within our brain. Hence, our world of experience
might as well be called our brain world. The extra-
mental world - the world as it exists apart from our
experience or knowledge of it - we may call the real
world.
Our brain world consists of neural models of the
real world that mediate experiences we project out
upon the real world by way of our feed-forward cog-
Vol. 4 No. 3
nitions and actions. Interaction with the real world
results in a feedback loop which our brain uses to
correct its models. Models are made up of neural
circuits by the tens of thousands that organize them-
selves in such a way that they mediate a percept, an
image, a thought, a feeling to the 'mind's eye.' The
brain is both the producer and audience of the mind-
movie that is our ongoing stream of experience - the
producer and audience of our brain world.
Why didn't I simply call the brain world the 'in-
ternal world' and the real world the 'external world?'
The reason is because our brain and our body (apart
from our modeling of them), are part of the real
world. We are both beings in the real world and
minds that experience and model both our inner
selves, and happenings in the external world. We are,
empirically speaking, a special object in the real world
in that we may experience ourselves both from the
outside in (I see my fingers moving over this key-
board) and from the inside out (I feel the pressure
inside my fingers as they press against the keys). Only
conscious beings can do that. Moreover I can only do
it for myself. I do not have access to you from the in-
side out. The closest I can get to this is the experience
of empathy.
When we think about things, reach conclusions,
make judgments, have insights, feel things — the expe-
riences and their mediating neural structures exist
only within the confines of our bodies. The repercus-
sions of these experiences occur in the real world, but
are limited in their effects to that part of reality that is
our self - our being. If I fantasize having a gourmet
meal with Sharon Stone, the effects of this internal
process remain internal to my body. But if I act upon
it - say, I pick up the phone and make reservations
for me and Sharon at Le Bee Fin, and then whip off
an invitation by email to Sharon at
www.hollywoodcelebrities.com, then the effects of my
brain world activity transcend my body and have im-
plications in external reality. Perhaps a while later
several beefy men in white coats show up to escort
me to a nice, quiet sanitarium. This was not my in-
tended outcome, obviously. I had imagined that
29
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Sharon would leap at the chance to have a super
meal with someone who's intelligence, and humble-
ness for that matter, are equal to her own. Alas, the
real world is such a tragic bummer!
The Real World
That's the hell of it! The real world is transcendental
relative to my mind and will. That is, there is always
in all things more to reality than I can know or con-
trol. While I am focused on this rather than that, real-
ity is all happening all the time. While I am busy
knowing this, there is a whole lot of that going on
simultaneously. Meanwhile, reality has power over my
body and my mind. Reality is forever resisting my will
and conditioning my acts. That's called being 'realis-
tic' Being realistic means I realize that the real world
is characterized by its obduracy relative to my inten-
tions, and I act accordingly. If I try to walk through a
wall without the benefit of a door, I will come up
against the obdurate nature of reality. While I may
imagine or dream that Sharon and I are having a
jolly time discussing string theory over our terrine de
saumon aux epinards, attempts to do so in reality
may well prove disappointing, even disastrous for me.
Also, if I try to solve a problem - like, try to recall all
the movies Sharon has starred in —and I can't seem to
do it, it is my brain itself that is the obdurate reality
that is thwarting my will. Folks my age encounter that
problem all the time. I am demanding more of my
brain than it can accomplish at the moment. Assum-
ing I am relatively sane, the feedback from reality will
at least lead me to alter my expectations, and perhaps
adjust my discernment between fantasy and reality. If
I am not able to make those adjustments, then the
fellows in the white coats may conclude, with good
reason, that I am 'crazy' 'out-of-it,' 'wacko,' so forth.
Neurocognitive adaptation has to do with our
encounters with the obdurate nature of the real
world - both physical reality and social reality (solid
walls other people and social conventions). Indeed,
much of early development in the baby has to do
with exploring the somatic and sensory limits of ob-
duracy - the obduracy of the baby's own body and
its local environment.
Reality also impresses itself on our brain world
through feedback about what is really possible. I like
to use the term affordancy for this feedback, a term
coined by the famous psychologist, James J. Gibson,
to conceptualize the active interaction between expe-
rience and reality. Affordancy is what reality provides
for our adaptation, whether the effects be 'good or ill'
Vol. 4 No. 3
- reality provides we critters both aliment and poison.
The development of knowledge about the real world
is the process by which the brain builds models from
our stock of inherited neurognosis that match - that
anticipate and accurately depict - what is afforded by
the world. Over there I see an object that looks like a
'chair.' The range of objects that we recognize (liter-
ally re-cognize) as being chairs is vast, and are pre-
cisely those objects we interpret as 'sit- able.' Some
objects are also 'stand-on-able.' Some 'chairs' are also
'stools' that are cognized as both 'sit-able' and 'stand-
on-able.' Many 'chairs' do not afford 'stand-on-
ability' and are thus not also 'stools,' and we would be
silly to use them as stools. Learning all about that is a
'chair' and what is not is part of our development. So
too is which women are 'date-able' and which are
not. Alas, Sharon is, for me at least, not only 'un-
date-able' but probably 'un-meet-able.' As the Bud-
dha taught, life is dukkha, 'suffering,' 'struggle,' or as
I prefer to translate it, 'a bitch.'
What is obdurate and affordant is not a quality of
reality so much as it arises during the interaction be-
tween an animal and its environment. In other words,
obduracy and affordancy depend upon the nature of
the animal, as well as the nature of the environment
of the animal. A stick lying over a stream may afford
adequate support ('bridge-ability') for a colony of
ants wishing to cross over, but not for a dog. Flowers
afford information in the ultraviolet range for honey
bees, but not for nearly hairless apes who cannot per-
ceive in that range of the spectrum. A river may ob-
durately thwart our crossing, but not a beaver's or an
elephant's. That rock may afford me a weapon, but
not for my dog Toby who has no hands. A small body
of water may be a puddle to an elephant that walks
right through it, a pond for us nearly hairless apes
who have to walk around it, and an ocean to an
earthworm who may well drown in it.
Another way to see affordancy and obduracy is as
the consequence of causation. As Arthur Peacocke
(2010:254) has written, '...to be real is to have causal
power' — the locus of control over what causes what
in the interaction between a brain world and reality is
external to the will of the animal. Our brain world is
the result of our cognizing our real self and our real
environment. Our world of experience is mediated
by neural networks that are themselves part of real
entities — real bodies — that are in turn embedded in a
real world of systemic, causal efficacy (to use White-
head's term). We know extramental reality because
we run up against the causal efficacy of both our lo-
cal environment and our own bodies. If we take our
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
next breath and all there is to breathe is water, then
we will drown. The locus of control over causal effi-
cacy is external to our brain world.
Brain World/Real World
The brain world/real world dynamic is a setup for
several systematic epistemological and ontological
errors frequently encountered among peoples across
cultures.
/. Mangling the Brain World and Real World
First of all, obduracy and affordancy are really ob-
verse qualities of reality in interaction with the devel-
oping brain world. Both our real body and the exter-
nal world present, not only as sensory experiences (I
see my hands, I hear my voice), but also as obdurate
(I can't fly in air no matter how hard I flap my arms,
but I can fly in water) and affordant (I can pick up
and handle all sorts of objects — i.e., they are 'grasp-
able' and 'manipulable') limits to our intentionality,
and thus operate to guide the development of our
knowledge about our physical being, our world and
the interactions between the two. We encounter these
qualities daily, as do all animals. We only become
aware of them per se when we run up against either
resistance to our intentions or new opportunities we
had not recognized before. Once we have adapted to
(adjusted our neural models of) obdurate and affor-
dant features in the world, we generally 'adapt-out'
and lose awareness of the distinction between our
experience and extramental reality - the distinction
between experience and real world fuzzes out and we
assume our experience to be reality. We all remember
when we learned to tie shoelaces and neckties, and
how the actions became automatic once we had
learned them. In a sense, we construct ourselves dur-
ing the course of development and adaptation into a
kind of automaton, a 'wet' robot who's will is to some
extent autonomous from our consciousness.
The point here is that people everywhere quite
naturally mangle the distinction between brain world
and real world - regardless of cultural background.
We normally operate as though the world of our ex-
perience — the movie in our head — is reality, when it
is never more than an adaptational rendition of real-
ity. Our world of experience is, and can only be, real-
ity as depicted by our brain world for the consump-
tion of our brain world. Our world of experience can
only be our particular point of view. After all, I am
looking at this bright monitor while typing and quite
naturally - and falsely - assume that the light is 'out
Vol. 4 No. 3
there,' when it is in fact 'in here,' inside my brain
world. Light and color is how my brain world inter-
prets and presents to itself electromagnetic energies
of a particular range of the visible spectrum to my
mind's eye. A congenitally blind person cannot nor-
mally experience light and color. His or her brain
world is devoid of light, just as the normal human
brain world is devoid of ultraviolet images that are
part of the honeybee's perception, or the electromag-
netic images apparent in the electric eel's perception.
2. The Brain-World and the Transcendental
Nature of Reality
Second of all, because we normally and quite natu-
rally project our brain world onto reality, we thereby
lose track of the fact that the real world is always
transcendental relative to our models, comprehen-
sion, perception and intentions. With respect to self-
awareness and self-understanding, we experience
ourselves as we think we are, as we imagine we are, as
we feel we are. We always know our self from a point
of view, and that point of view is always partial. I can
see the front of this monitor, but not the back. In fact
I cannot see all the sides of anything at the same
time. The great painter, Pablo Picasso played with
this natural limitation to perception in many of his
cubist works, like seeing a woman's face from both
the front and side at the same time. By the same to-
ken, I can never experience my entire being. Most of
the real me is hidden to my perception or introspec-
tion. My being is forever a transcendental mystery
unto myself.
Naturally, if we were to change our point of view
on ourselves, our model of ourselves would likely
change. For instance, if we make a study of our body
scientifically, we soon discover we are less a 'person'
than we are an ecosystem, a foraging ground for our
microbiome (Wilson 2004; Marples 1965). Few of us
take into account the fact that trillions of microor-
ganisms live on us and inside us, and make our real
body their home. Just which organisms live where on
us depends on many factors that affect locations on
and in our bodies as niches. Temperature variation,
moisture, pH, chemicals present and absent, available
forage, access to light, how often and with which
products we wash, and so forth. Different places on
the skin have different populations of different mi-
crobes. So too in our gut. It is estimated that some-
thing like 100 trillion microbes live on us and in us.
There are roughly 10 times the number of microbes
on and in us than we have cells in our body! In one
study of 26 adult humans, it was found that an aver-
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
age of 46,000 living organisms dwell under each fin-
gernail. [Ha! Think about that next time you scratch
an itch!] Yet we never think about our self as an eco-
system. Again, our own body is a transcendental ob-
ject to our brain world. Even our brain is a transcen-
dental object to our brain world. We could spend the
rest of our lives studying the human body - including
our own body and its brain - and never come to the
end of knowledge about our being.
It does not matter what aspect of reality toward
which we turn our attention, there is more to it than
we can ever know - and it is all happening all the
time. We can study baseball, ceramics, nematode
worms, black holes, ocean tides, legumes, robotics - it
really doesn't matter, for we will never come to the
end of it unless our brain world stops the process of
inquiry. Stopping the process of inquiry is precisely
what the brain world is designed to do. We naturally
will turn toward, and become interested in novelty
until at some point our urge to understand the nov-
elty wears thin, and then we 'close' our model and
carry on. It does not matter that there is an endless
amount of information yet to be learned, our brain is
designed to stop inquiry when it has adapted to the
novelty and rendered it redundant and sufficiently
meaningful. The more intelligent the animal, the
longer and more energetic will be our scrutiny of
novelty. Chimps will study a novel object longer on
average than will a baboon or other monkey. Hu-
mans will study novelty longer than will a chimp. But
inevitably we lose interest and our model of the pre-
viously novel object or happening closes. We have
adapted to it. We have modeled its obdurate and af-
fordant nature.
There is an interesting Buddhist meditation that
teaches one a lot about this process. In some circles it
is called 'doing a Patthana' (named for the last book
of the Abhidhamma Pitaka). The Patthana is a
lengthy discourse on causation, and isolates through
contemplative methods some 24 types of causality
(paccaya) that are involved in any and all experiences.
Doing a Patthana involves meditating upon any phe-
nomenon - the simpler the better, like an apple
standing on a table top - and parsing out all the
causal relations necessary for that experience to be
occurring before the mind at that moment. Like any
meditation of substance - and this one gets really
complex, really quick! - one has to actually do it to
really understand the point of it. Suffice to say, no
matter what phenomenon you meditate upon, you
end up with the entire universe, as well as its history
and to some extent its future. In other words, you
Vol. 4 No. 3
never come to the end of the causation. This is one of
the powerful meditations that can lead eventually to
the realization of totality - the realization that every-
thing is causally interconnected, and that nothing
whatever is separate or independent of the All. This
is a very rare level of systemic comprehension. Very
few people anywhere are able to comprehend their
world in such terms.
3. Invisible Causation in the Real World
To repeat: the real world and everything in it is tran-
scendental relative to our ability to model it within
our brain world. Another reason that this is the case
is that most of the causality operating in the real
world is hidden from us -invisible to our senses. This
is especially true of causal relations between other-
wise visible things and events. If a causal relationship
is very proximal both in space and time, then we can
be accurate in our understanding of many of its ele-
ments. The other car ran a red light and T-boned us.
I throw a stone and a few moments later see the
splash in the lake. But most causation in the real
world is relatively distant from our point of observa-
tion. We adapt to gravity, but we can neither see grav-
ity nor can we totally comprehend gravity. What we
actually do is fill in the gaps with concepts and theo-
ries. I don't mean just scientific ideas and theories
here. I mean stories and explanations developed in
each and every culture on the planet to account for
the invisible aspects of the world. This is the stuff
myths are made of.
For instance, the Navajo people of the American
southwest hold that all perceivable things in the world
have normally invisible, causative, spiritual aspects
that are imagined as 'Holy People' — for example, the
Mountain People, the Star People, the River People,
the Rain People, the Corn People, and so on. For so-
phisticated Navajo thinkers, these Holy People are
anthropomorphized symbols for the usually hidden
and vital element within all things, and which tradi-
tional Navajo philosophy equates with 'Wind' (nilch'i;
see McNeley 1981). People themselves also have such
a hidden dimension called 'the Wind within one' (nil-
ch'i hwii'siziinii). All these Winds are really part of
the one all-pervasive, all-encompassing Holy Wind.
Winds are never distinct entities and there is energy
flowing in and out of even the most enduring and
solid objects. It is the coming and going of wind that
accounts for the tapestry of reciprocal causation typi-
cal of their understanding of the cosmos. The choice
of 'wind' as the central metaphor is an explicit rec-
ognition - common to many cultures on the planet -
32
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
that there are forces that normally cannot be ob-
served, save by inference from their effects. You can-
not see the wind, but it can blow your house down in
a storm.
It is very much the function of myth in more tra-
ditional societies like Navajo to reveal and explicate
the invisible dimensions of the world. The hidden
energies that are the essence of the world are given a
face — a countenance that may be contemplated, that
is 'pleasing to the mind,' that may be enacted in ritual
(like mystery plays and healing ceremonies) and that
may be imagined in daily life as the efficient cause of
significant phenomena and events (see Davis-Floyd
and Laughlin 2013). For those members who are well
versed in their society's mythological system, the core
myths and their various symbolic extrusions are all-
of-a-piece. They form a single, ramified 'cognitive
map' within the context of which events — even
events in the modern world of global politics and
economic affairs — make sense and are easily related
to both other events in the contemporary world, and
archetypal events that unfold in that timeless era of
mythological mysteries.
4. Finite Brain-World, Infinite Real-World
The relationship between our brain world and the
real world is thus one of a model to the real thing
being modeled. Only, in this case, the model is very
finite, much localized and very simplified, and reality
is transcendental and infinite. As I have said, our
brain world, by way of its nature of sometimes being
conscious, tends to be focused on this rather than
that, while reality is happening all the time - and in-
cidentally reality never sleeps. Moreover, most of
what is happening in reality is invisible to our brain
world. Those trillions of microbes just keep foraging
about our body-ecosystem, doing their individual and
collective thing -which, by the way, keeps our body-
ecosystem healthy most of the time - and we are
blissfully unaware of it. Those vast hoards of mi-
crobes might as well not be there, for all the attention
we pay them. Yet their existence and their activities
are real and they have real effects in the real world.
Some NASA scientists have wondered whether we
humans can actually live permanentiy in space colo-
nies because of our dependence upon microorgan-
isms that we can only see under powerful microscopes
(check out Pyle et al. n.d.).
The real world isn't localized. Locality is defined
by conscious beings mentally adapting to their envi-
ronment. Reality on the other hand has no center, no
focus, no locality. Modern physicists will tell you that
Vol. 4 No. 3
the entire universe is implicated in every event, no
matter how small or large. We come to know and
model our world from our being outwards. We are
the center of our own self-constructed universe.
When a newborn baby focuses on objects in her envi-
ronment, they are objects that are very close. New-
borns cannot see clearly beyond a few feet. Only
gradually do their senses extend outwards in their
quest for sensory patterns to identify and store in
memory. When a new worker honeybee begins to
forage outside the hive, she does so in gradually in-
creasing circles outward from the hive, going no fur-
ther afield than she can cognitively map and find her
way back home. Meanwhile, the real world is all
there all the time, a plenum void with infinite dimen-
sions and literally mind-boggling complexity.
Conclusion
One of the implications of this neuroanthropological
view of experience is that 'relativist,' or 'constructiv-
ist' theories of culture simply won't wash anymore.
The brain world is never a blank slate. It is exquisitely
structured from fetal life onward. Cultures are varia-
tions on a theme. Most of the essential elements of
experience are the same for every normal human on
the planet. Interpretations will vary locally, as will
emphasis upon this or that state of consciousness.
Some cultures like ours will typically ignore their
dream life, while other cultures consider dreaming
essential to their way of life (Laughlin 201 1). Yet eve-
ryone on the planet dreams every night, and the
structural properties of dreaming are universal. An-
thropologists continue to ignore the neurosciences at
their peril, for as the burgeoning neuroscience disci-
plines emerge and master their scopes of inquiry, an-
thropological theory will be left further and further
behind.
References
Davis-Floyd, R.E. & Laughlin, CD. (2013). The Power
of Ritual. New York: Random House/Schocken.
Laughlin, CD (2011). Communing with the Gods: Con-
sciousness, Culture and the Dreaming Brain. Brisbane:
Daily Grail.
Laughlin, CD., McManus, J., & d'Aquili, E.G.
(1990). Brain, Symbol and Experience: Toward a JVeu-
rophenomenology of Human Consciousness. New York:
Columbia University Press.
33
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Marples, MJ. (1965). The Ecology of the Human Skin.
Springfield, IL: Thomas.
McNeley J.K. (1981). Holy Wind in Navajo Philosophy.
Tucson, AR: University of Arizona Press.
Moberg, M. (2013). Engaging Anthropological Theory: A
Social and Political History. London: Roudedge.
Pyle, Barry et al. (n.d). 'Microbial Drug Resistance
and Virulence (MDRV). 'http://www.nasa.gov/
mission_pages/ station/ research/ experiments/
MDRV.html#description.
Wilson, M. (2004). Microbial Inhabitants of Humans.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
News & Recent Publications of Interest
"Painful and Extreme Rituals Enhance Social Cohesion and Charity"
http://www.psypost.org/2013/06/painful-and-extreme-rituals-enhance-social-cohesion-and-ch
"Vatican to Announce John Paul II 'Miracle'"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10129593/Vatican-to-announce-
John-Paul-ll-miracle.html
"Hearbeat Used to Generate Out-of-Body Experience"
http://www.newscientist.eom/article/dn23694-heartbeat-used-to-generate-outofbody-experience.html#.UcLv
v2BZ8eN
"Shaman 'Rainmaking' Center Discovered in South Africa"
http://news.yahoo.com/shaman-rainmaking-center-discovered-south-africa-114745962.html
"Dreams Cloud Brings lASD's Annual Psi Dreaming Contest Online"
http://www.prweb.com/releases/201 3/6/prweb1 0792903.htm
"Is Spirituality the Result of a Combination of Hallucinations and Happiness?"
http://wikkorg.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/is-spirituality-the-result-of-a-combination-of-hallucinations-and-ha
ppiness/
'"Neurons to Nirvana' Makes the Case for Deeper Scientific Research into Psychedelics"
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/neurons-to-nirvana-filmmakers-talk-about-scientific-research-into-psyched
elics
"Prehistoric Rock Art Maps Cosmological Belief"
http://phys.org/news/2013-06-professor-prehistoric-art-cosmological-belief.html
"The Greeks who Worship the Ancient Gods"
htt p ://www. b be . co . u k/n ews/m ag az i ne -229726 1 0
Biography
An anthropologist by trade,
education and inclination, Char-
les Laughlin taught the subject
at Carleton University, Ottawa,
Canada, for 25+ years. He re-
tired in 2001. Among other
things, being an anthropologist
allowed Charlie to live with dif-
ferent peoples all over the
planet, including African pastor-
alists in East Africa, Tibetan
lamas in Nepal and India, and
Navajo Indians in the American
southwest. He naturally learned
lots of things, including how cultures influence the states of
mind of people, and how culture is both an adaptational
strength and a trap for individual minds seeking the truth of
being and existence.
Vol. 4 No. 3
34
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
UFOs and Other Anomalous Phenomena
Connections, Beliefs and Perspectives
Jose Banuelos
Anomalous and often perplexing phenomena that have not been explained in a conclusive manner
have been a part of human experience for a long period of time. Through this time such phenom-
ena have been interpreted in different frameworks (supernatural, paranormal, religious, magical,
etc.), this has contributed to the formation of various beliefs and fields of study that have individu-
ally dealt with and advanced theories and "refined" interpretations. Historically a few researchers
have endeavored into the unknown with an open mind and have found parallels between some
manifestations and events, although the contribution from those researchers has been a valuable
one, it must also be acknowledged that it has been limited, a comprehensive or holistic perspective
to the anomalous phenomena and its relationship to humanity and the environment has yet to ap-
pear. The way we [humans] tend to form and hold on to our beliefs appears to be deterring our
progress towards a solution. The purpose of this paper is to encourage an open-minded, inclusive,
and multidisciplinary approach to anomalous phenomena.
Ideas and Beliefs
Humanity harbours the most various opinions
and fantasies about Truth, morality and
Beauty, even about prosperity and (most curi-
ous) even about health (Koneczny 1962: 153).
Before an adequate and reliable approach to the
anomalous and paranormal can be developed, it is
important to consider a fundamental, influential and
often overlooked aspect: belief. The manifestations of
the phenomena (anomalous aerial objects, strange
creatures or beings, visions, abductions, etc.) can be
traced back to at least the beginning of recorded his-
tory. It appears that in early times the phenomena
were not really considered to be unexplained, on the
contrary, they received numerous interpretations that
found a place in the beliefs of the times, or gave way
to new ones (although mainly of a religious or spiri-
tual nature).
Until fairly recently some interesting events have
taken place: 1) there has been an increase in openness
and tolerance towards alternative ideas, 2) beliefs that
were once confined to certain geographical areas
have found their way unto others, 3) a more objective
and historical approach to these subjects has been
Vol.4 No. 3
taken by a few researchers, and 4) technology has
facilitated the communication of recent phenomena.
This series of events have encompassed religion,
spiritualism, occultism, witchcraft, paranormal phe-
nomena, etc. resulting in a surge of alternative ideas
and beliefs that are more or less revivals and amal-
gamations of "ancient knowledge" tailored according
to the intellectual, technological and social conditions
of the present, but ones that do not necessarily repre-
sent reality in a more profound or complete way.
However, closer or farther from the mystery as they
may be, these new beliefs are bound to influence and
change our future conditions, just as ancient religions
and beliefs greatly shaped history through a subtle
influence upon human thought and (consequently)
human action. Our first observation is that the inter-
pretations that have been attributed to anomalous
phenomena have (directly or indirectly) influenced
humanity at least since recorded history began, and
the way we interpret anomalous phenomena today
can have an effect on our future.
Humanity has reached an intellectual and tech-
nological level that allows us to communicate over
vast distances in real-time, gather great amounts of
information from worldwide sources, analyze the data
and make inferences based on what was gathered. In
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
view of these circumstances it would seem that
greater discussion, proposal and objective research
looking for conclusive data on anomalies would take
place, but this has seldom occurred, it seems as if
open-mindedness is still scarce. Meanwhile, research
of related topics is becoming more strenuous, tedious
and sometimes even confusing due to the overwhelm-
ing amount of information that is becoming avail-
able. This information has not facilitated the explana-
tion of the phenomena, but according to Horgan:
The perennial philosophy, postmodernism,
negative theology, transpersonal psychology,
neurotheology, gnosticism, and neo-shamanism
all insist in their own ways that there is an irre-
ducible mystery at the heart of things. So does
science (2003, p.218).
Although no discipline has unveiled this mystery yet,
they all have evoked one recurring element: believers
and skeptics, but where are the unbiased and open-
minded who dispassionately and carefully consider
the alternatives? Even with the "pseudo-sciences"
where one would think researchers would keep an
open-mind, many have comfortably settled for a view
that has remained unaffected by other equally or
even more plausible alternative explanations, the ex-
traterrestrial origin as an explanation for UFOs is an
example, in his investigation on this subject Keel no-
ticed that:
Man's tendency to create a deep and inflexible
belief on the basis of little or no evidence has
been exploited. These beliefs have created tun-
nel vision and blinded many to the real nature
of the phenomenon (1970, p. 7).
Approaching the Unknown
In certain ways the study of the anomalous or para-
normal has followed a similar approach as science; it
has been divided into "sub-disciplines" that are dif-
ferentiated by the type of manifestation and/ or their
given interpretation. Variability has mostly been
taken to represent distinct and unrelated phenomena.
Each discipline has been further fragmented by dif-
ferent theories that are backed by advocates who
dedicate substantial time and effort to advance a the-
ory. The content that has been derived from such
theories and research has (for the most part) been less
than scientific, in the sense that it has not been based
on rigorous and unbiased investigation and/or re-
porting. This has mostly led to speculation, contro-
versy and to further obscure that which was already a
mystery.
With the anomalous it seems that a reductive ap-
proach does not seem very favorable as it has not yet
been determined how much the phenomena encom-
passes and/ or how far it permeates, yet, the reductive
approach is the road most researchers have taken.
Few have considered the idea and investigated the
phenomena with the possibility that the various kinds
of manifestations could represent parts of a whole, a
single source or coordination between sources. Some
researchers are not even interested in the various
types of phenomena (Mizrach (2013) noted this
about many ufologists), Cannon wrote about this di-
vision within ufology:
Many investigators study only sightings and
physical traces such as landings, and stop there.
Other investigators study only abductions and
stop there (1999, p.8).
Even though Keel observed this in the 70s it can be
argued that it still applies in the present. There are
probably just a few ufologists who would consider an
alternative explanation to the phenomenon, Randies
suggested that they should end their search for 'be-
ings that, in the end, appear to be illusory' (2013,
p.3 1). But even if the various anomalous phenomena
or their interpretations were all but illusory, the ef-
fects on humanity are certainly not. 'I have come to
see that the abduction phenomenon has important
philosophical, spiritual, and social implications'
(Mack 1995, p.3), the same can be said about experi-
ences of a religious, mystical, psychedelic and para-
normal nature.
Vol. 4 No. 3
Others (although open to some paranormal phenom-
ena) would appear have a limit to what they will be-
lieve to be possible, of the 1966 Mothman sightings
of West Virginia, Bishop comments:
There was so much weirdness connected with
this story... that many UFO investigators and
historians refuse to take the case seriously. That
is a shame, as there may be keys here to un-
locking the interconnected nature of the UFO
phenomena with other fortean issues (n.d.).
Considering that humanitycould be dealing with a
'level of thought that is superhuman', Aime Michel
36
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
pointed out that 'neither the absurd nor the contra-
dictory must ever be excluded as such' (Bowen
ed.l969,p. 255)
Researchers that have looked at variability as
separate parts of one "system" have gone on to un-
cover some interesting parallels. It is important to
remember that open-mindedness and knowledge in
other fields have played a significant role in discover-
ing these similarities. In the paranormal field, Keel
was one of those researchers, he wrote:
History, psychiatry, religion, and the occult
have proven to be far more important to an
understanding of the whole than the many
books which simply recount the endless sight-
ings of aerial anomalies (1970, p.6).
At some point it starts to become apparent that (as
Michel so aptly stated): 'the rule is to think of every-
thing and to believe nothing' (Bowen 1969, p.253).
Making Connections
We have already seen that one of the most frequent
consequences of anomalous phenomena has been the
creation of beliefs. But belief has not always come
from the interpretation of the events; it has also come
from supposed communication. In ancient cultures it
is said that shamans and priests received messages
from their deities, people that reported to have had
direct contact with angels or messengers of god
abound in religions and spiritual beliefs, numerous
are the cases of automatic writing and mediums that
have received information, and the UFO contactees/
abductees who have received messages from "inter-
stellar beings." These are all examples of supposed
communication with some sort of supernatural being,
intelligence or mind. Many cults, spiritual movements
and religions have been established by direct instruc-
tion or inspiration from this contact. Sociologists
Glock and Stark stated:
All religious experiences, from the dimmest to
the most frenzied, constitute occasions defined
by those experiencing them as an encounter
between themselves and some supernatural
consciousness (quoted from Vallee 2008, p. 14).
It is worth noting that it does not appear to be the
case that the purported contactees of "otherworldly
Vol. 4 No. 3
beings," "ascended masters" and "messengers of
god" have doubted the information they have re-
ceived.
Physical, psychological and physiological similarities
in the experiences of the anomalous can be found by
researching the many cases through history. For ex-
ample, parallels have been identified in the kidnap-
ping stories of fairy tales, "alien" abductions, witches
meetings with the devil, and various other 'mythical'
stories, even the religious stories of angels taking
people to mountains or heaven (Bejarano 2013; Keel
1970). Vallee wondered why the supposed aliens be-
haved 'like the denizens of fairy tales and the elves of
ancients folklore?'(2008, p.6). Mack also noticed the
similarities, he stated:
The UFO abduction experience, while unique
in many respects, bears resemblance to other
dramatic, transformative experiences under-
gone by shamans, mystics, and ordinary citi-
zens who have had encounters with the para-
normal (1995, p.441).
Time and its influence on space have always been of
importance to humanity and it appears to play an
important role in the experiences of anomalous phe-
nomena as well. In various cases of UFO encounters,
alien abductions, fairy kidnappings, time does not
seem to elapse in the ordinary manner in which we
are accustomed to, it would seem more analogous to
dreams and some psychedelic experiences.
Sound and light are also important elements of
the anomalous. There is the whistling, swishing,
humming, hissing, or eerie throbbing sound that is
usually described in close encounters with UFOs and
abduction cases. In religious /spiritual literature and
art we find a parallel in the angels and messengers of
god who were depicted as luminous beings, some-
times with a sounding trumpet, as well as the chariots
or clouds from which some of them came. In the
fairy stories there is the singing that was used to en-
chant humans, fairy circles have become crop circles.
Strange sounds and lights are also part of the polter-
geist phenomena.
The study of close encounters with 'aliens' and
abduction cases has shown that many people who
had this experiences often reported other parapsy-
chological, psychic or poltergeist phenomena: hear-
ing voices speaking from within oneself, unexplain-
able sounds, rapping, lights flickering, locked doors
37
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
opening by themselves etc. (Fowler 1982; Mack 1995;
Keel 1970).
Cryptozoology and ufology are usually consid-
ered as separate and unrelated, yet, there have been
many encounters with strange creatures and beings
(not associated with the usual description of 'aliens')
in relation to UFOs which could suggest a link be-
tween both types of phenomena (Bowen 1969, Keel
1970). Curiously, Mack (1995) noticed that to many
abductees, 'aliens' first appeared as animals, and that
'the connection with animal spirits is very powerful
for many abductees' (1995:18).
During an investigation into SPH (spontaneous
human combustion), Randies and Hugh were 'led,
somewhat unexpectedly, into contact with UFOs'
(2013, p. 31), they associated the physical/
physiological effects of the UFO phenomena with
energy (especially static charge), effects that in the 70s
Keel attributed to electromagnetism. The malfunc-
tion of electronic and mechanical equipment has
been connected with various anomalous phenomena.
It is also interesting to note that many of the pat-
terns and consequences on humanity that can poten-
tially be attributed to anomalous phenomena have
been discerned through the meticulous examination
of worldwide historical events, it seems as if the phe-
nomena becomes more apparent through its long
term effects (social consequences) only long after they
have influenced human action. This in itself should
be a very important aspect for research as we may be
dealing with a subtle but potent influence on human-
ity (no matter what the source may be). For this rea-
son Vallee repeatedly urged scientific research into
the UFO phenomena.
At this point there is one aspect that could link
shamans with enlightened people, abductees, fairy
stories, psychedelic experiences and paranormal phe-
nomena: a profound change in perception. Through
history some people have looked for it, others have
suddenly been exposed to it, and most have had their
attention swayed towards it (whether they have no-
ticed it or not) by curiosity or some kind of associa-
tion.
Hide and seek
Through history the different phenomena has appar-
ently been manifesting, leaving just enough amount
of evidence (be it visions, signs, etc.) so as to evoke
certain interpretations that led to various beliefs,
manifested with enough variability and confusion so
as to avoid arousing investigation towards itself, but
inducing an impact so great that myths and beliefs
based on the events have endured for centuries. In his
investigation on mysticism Horgan mentions:
Even the most fantastical ghost stories, includ-
ing the old stories of religion, can serve a pur-
pose... [They] can remind us of the unfa-
thomable mystery at the heart of things (2003,
p.235).
Be it by accident or design, the manifestations of and
the beliefs that the anomalous phenomena evoke do
not shed light on the mysterious source and its inten-
tions (if any). It tends to avoid objective explanation
in a way that one could seriously conclude (but not
reliably prove) that there is intelligence behind it; we
are left with "coincidences" and "absurdities."
History has taught us that when an idea turns
into an inflexible belief and open-mindedness ceases,
human action can be controlled (for better or worse)
by authority, paradoxically, it could also be true that a
vast amount of information based on so many alter-
native ideas can make objective research very difficult
or next to impossible (even with the technology avail-
able today), therefore, one important consideration in
the study of the anomalous phenomena is that of
consciously keeping check on our own beliefs, their
influence on our view of reality, and our expectations
when doing research, because to some degree our
published or communicated views and results
(whether they are correct or not) can contribute to
the ideas and beliefs of others, and we as
researchers/authors could be somehow influenced
and used for this purpose. 'There are times when co-
incidental circumstances make me feel like a pawn in
some complex but predetermined chessgame' wrote
Fowler (1982, p. 131). When investigating the Moth-
man sightings, Keel realized he could be manipulated
by the phenomena, he termed this aspect of it the
"reflective" effect (1975). We can also hint at a more
subtle yet interesting occurrence with Mack:
I will devote more attention in this book to the
transformational and spiritual growth aspects
of the abduction phenomenon... There are
several reasons for this decision... most inter-
esting, I think, is my personal experience as a
psychiatrist dealing with abductees: I seem to
receive more information of this kind in my
work with abductees than, apparently, do other
Vol. 4 No. 3
38
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
investigators. It is not altogether clear why this
is so (1995, p.31).
In 1988, long before writing her book about the ab-
duction phenomena, Cannon also had a 'strange oc-
currence':
During the night I had the distinct and unfa-
miliar feeling that an entire block of informa-
tion had somehow been inserted into my
head... I knew the concept dealt with the ex-
planation that should be included in my book
on UFO cases, which had not yet even started
(1999, pp.12-13).
It took ten years for Cannon to accumulate enough
information to form a book, yet she affirmed that: 'it
definitely followed the concept given to me in 1988'
(1999, pp.14).
In light of these incidences it might also be im-
portant for authors and researchers of these topics to
consider the events in their own lives and look for
subtle but certain influences that have led them to an
interest in these topics, as well as the circumstances
that have led to the information and ideas they seek
to convey to others. We might find some interesting
parallels and "coincidences" in our personal history.
Conclusion
Regrettably anomalous phenomena has been for the
most part researched and analyzed partially and with
much bias, yet, in the process many strong ideas have
been formed and currently prevail. The average per-
son tends to associate UFOs with extraterrestrial life,
poltergeists with ghosts, ghosts with deceased people,
cryptozoology with undiscovered or ancient crea-
tures, fairies and elves with myth, etc.
It should be clear by now that the study of the
anomalous requires (among other things) impartial
researchers who are dispassionate towards the result
as long as the truth is revealed, who are unbiased to-
wards alternative explanations, capable of admitting
errors and adjusting research efforts accordingly, who
are familiar with different anomalous phenomena
including historical events and are knowledgeable in
as many "scientific" fields as possible.
The anomalous phenomena have proven that
humanity is most vulnerable in one area, in its need
for belief. Humanity can prosper or decay based on
its beliefs and anomalous phenomena has been
shown to be at the core of various (if not all) of them.
It is time we look at all manifestations and events with
an open and unbiased mind, trying to uncover what
has been behind our very own ideas and motives, and
for what purpose.
References
Bejarano, F. (2013). 'Supernatural Abductions: UFO
and Folklore Narratives. Paranthropology: Journal of
Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal' [On-
line], 2(3), 8-13. Available from:
http:/ / www.paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com
/free-pdf.html [Accessed 22 May 2013].
Bishop, G. (n.d. ). 60 years of UFOs: The top ten cases.
ForteanTimes [Online]. Available from:
http:/ / www.forteantimes.com/ strangedays/ ufofi
les/ 519/ greg_bishops_ufo_top_ten.html [Ac-
cessed 12 June 2013].
Bowen, C. ed. (1969). The Humanoids. New York:
Henry Regnery.
Cannon, Dolores (1999). The Custodians. Arkansas:
Ozark Mountain.
Fowler, Raymond E. (1982). The Andreasson affair, phase
two. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Horgan, John (2003). Rational Mysticism: dispatches from
the border between science and spirituality. New York:
Houghton Mifflin Company.
Keel, John A. (1970). Why UFOs: Operation Trojan
Horse. New York: Manor Books.
Keel, John A. (1975). The Mothman prophecies. New
York: Tor Books
Koneczny, Feliks (1962). On the plurality of civilizations.
London: Polonica Publications.
Mack, John E. (1995). Abduction: Human encounters with
aliens. Revised edn. New York: Ballantine Books.
Mizrach, Steven (2013). 'The Para-Anthropology of
UFO Abductions: The case for the UTH.' Par-
anthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to
the Paranormal [Online], 4(2), 4-18. Available
from:
Vol. 4 No. 3
39
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
http:/ / www.paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com
/free-pdf.html [Accessed 22 May 2013]
Randies, Jenny (2013). Alien endgame? ForteanTimes
(UFO Casebook), February, pp. 31.
Randies, Jenny (2013). Fire from the sky. ForteanTimes
(UFO Casebook), June, pp. 31.
Vallee, Jacques (2008). Messengers of deception: UFO
Contacts and Cults. 2008 Edition. Brisbane: Daily
Grail Publishing.
Biography
Jose Banuelos has been interested in ancient cultures,
science, art, and anomalous phenomena since he was
ten years old. In his early 20s he searched for a cen-
tral truth in various esoteric disciplines and teachings,
later his interest in archeology brought him in contact
with various alternative theories regarding the source
of ancient culture and myth. His recent look into the
UFO and abduction phenomena has culminated in a
reflection upon all his previous explorations. He has
learned that an unprejudiced and inquisitive mind is
fundamental in approaching mysteries.
New Publication of Interest:
Breaking Convention:
Essays on Psychedelic Consciousness
A multidimensional trip into psychedelic consciousness, science and culture. Topics covered
range from Neolithic worldviews, prehistoric rituals and Amerindian epistemology to weapon-
ized hallucinogens, religious freedoms, trip lit and the
death of the '60s dream. This collection of 22 original
essays transects a wide range of disciplines to offer
empirical, mystical, imaginal, hermeneutic, queer,
phenomenological and parapsychological perspec-
tives on the exploration of psychedelics, taking in
scientific debates on MDMA, manifestos, policy chal-
lenges, anaesthetic revelations and communications
from the herbs along the way.
Featuring contributions from:
Cameron Adams, Joseph Bicknell, Ras Binghi
Congo-Nyah, Nese Devenot, Rob Dickins, Rick
Doblin, Jon Cole, Val Curran, Kevin Feeney, Amanda
Feilding, Tom Froese, Jonathan Hobbs, Mike Jay,
Axel Klein, Reka Komaromi, Beatriz Caiuby Labate,
Andy Letcher, Luis Eduardo Luna, David Luke,
Kirkland Murray, Peter Oehen, Andy Parrott, Vit
Pokorny, Ffion Reynolds, Andy Roberts, William
Rowlandson, Ben Sessa, Angela Voss, and Anna
Waldstein
Artwork by Blue Firth
Edited by Cameron Adams, Anna Waldstein, David Luke, Ben Sessa & Dave King
Published by Strange Attractor Press
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
The Culture of War, "Afterlife Conscious Minds," &
Morphogenetic Fields: The Past Soundscapes of an
American Civil War Battlefield
John C. Sabol
Introduction
In this paper, I will present a particular society, the
"culture of war" of the American Civil War period,
where, in a particular situational setting (a battlefield),
the sense of hearing (and directed listening) domi-
nated the external sensory experience of men, and
directed their actions in specific spaces. This sensing,
defined as the "bodily" means of gathering informa-
tion, was an acoustemology of experience, a particu-
lar way of knowing the external environment as one
experienced "seeing the elephant" on an American
Civil War battlefield."? According to Clinton (2009),
"the deathbed of a loved one was perhaps the most
hallowed of Nineteenth Century ritual settings"
(2009:4). The "Good Death" was a prepared death,
surrounded by family at home, and a burial in the
family plot. The American Civil War battlefield
changed that. The ritual was never completed, in
many instances, for the soldiers who fought and died
on these American Civil War battlefields.
In an important ethnographic study in the an-
thropology of the senses, Kathryn L. Geurts (2003)
investigated the cultural meaning system and senso-
rium of the Anlo-Ewe-speaking people of Southeast-
ern Ghana. In her book, she introduces a new aspect
of embodiment as a paradigm for anthropological
fieldwork. In Anlo culture, there is little relevance for
the five-senses model that pervades Western Euro-
Anglo-American cultural traditions. Geurts's work
documents the Anlo culture's use of sensory experi-
ence, and involves a theory of inner states, and their
particular way of defining external experience. On
an American Civil War battlefield, where I have con-
ducted ethno-archaeological "ghost excavations" for
a number of years, this theory of "inner states," as a
way of defining "external experience," comes into
focus for my research on "apparitional experience" as
it is perceived today on the Civil War battlefield. The
lack of the "good death" was a contributing factor, I
Vol. 4 No. 3
propose, to this contemporary "apparitional experi-
ence." This paper concerns one such investigation,
the engagement at Burnside Bridge on the Antietam
Battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Burnside Bridge: An American Civil War
Battlefield Engagement
The battle of Antietam was fought on September 17,
1862. It was the single bloodiest day of combat in
American history with more than 26,000 casualties.
The engagement at Burnside Bridge, fought on the
southeastern part of the battlefield, was a horrific
engagement which lasted for five hours on the morn-
ing and early afternoon of the 17 th . At Burnside
Bridge, more than 1 1 ,000 Union troops assaulted the
bridge five times before occupying the Confederate
positions on the opposite bank of Antietam creek.
That bridge was defended by less than 300 Confed-
erate soldiers. Because of the heroics of the Confed-
erate defenders, the engagement at Burnside Bridge
has been called the "Thermopylae of the Civil War"
(Tucker 2000:154):
"At Antietam a relative handful of ragged and
barefoot 2 nd and 20 th Georgia soldiers per-
formed one of the most important military
feats of the war by defending Rohrbach's
Bridge (later called "Burnside Bridge") for
most of 17 September 1862. These Georgians
were truly Spartans in gray, who fought against
impossible odds (Tucker 2000:154).
Because of this highly emotional defense, the large
amount of Union casualties (600), in a narrow and
confining space, and the time period involved, it was
thought that the landscape in and around Burnside
Bridge was a good site to explore the possibilities of
recording the "remains" of any sonic elements of a
Civil War soundscape that may have been recorded
41
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
onto the environment. The landscape has received
little change since the Civil War. It is protected by
employees of the National Park Service, and access
into and out of the area is controlled by park rangers.
Special permission was needed to conduct an investi-
gation there at night.
The stone bridge itself afforded a possible re-
cording device, and Antietam creek was another pos-
sible source. There have also been numerous reports
of people experiencing "anomalous" manifestations
in the area ("voices," "shadow figures," other "visual"
anomalies), as well as having personal "apparitional
experiences." During our non-evasive "ghost excava-
tion," we hoped to record some of these "residual"
elements. What we did record, however, was far more
than a "residual" soundscape. We have recorded, in
context, the possible "voices" of specific soldiers who
fought and died at Burnside Bridge on September 17,
1862.
Social and Mental Fields: Are These Evi-
dence of an "Afterlife Conscious Mind?
How we make ourselves human, be human, and re-
main human even, perhaps, after the physical death
of the body and brain, was (is), in one particular "cul-
ture" (the "culture of war" of the American Civil
War), through an acoustemological means. In this
context, I agree with Geurts's assertion that "a cul-
ture's sensory order is one of the first and most basic
elements of making ourselves human" (2003:3). If
sensory order is a patterned field that gives relative
importance to different senses through which a soci-
ety learns to perceive and experience the world, then
the Civil War soldier learned a particular modality of
sensing and interacting in this "culture of war." That
particular modality was acoustemological, forming a
particular and learned way of knowing how and
when to move and act on a battlefield. It is this
learned pattern of knowing that may survive, I pro-
pose, after physical death.
An American Civil War battlefield was primarily
a soundscape, not a landscape, for the common
"foot" soldier. The intense (and blinding) firepower
that was generated onto the environment, in mostly
restricted spaces, obscured the vision of the land-
scape setting. This battlefield soundscape was linked
to particular "external experiences" (hearing specific
"soundmarks" in particular spaces/temporalities).
This "audio-vision" (Chion 1994) prompted a specific
"inner state" which Jordania (201 1) has termed "bat-
Vol. 4 No. 3
tie trance." This "battle trance," I propose, created
specific cultural and mental "fields" (Sheldrake 2012)
of the "culture of war" of the American Civil War,
imprinting these "fields" onto the physical environ-
ment.
As part of the "culture of war," these soldiers
developed their sonic abilities as a means to know the
"external experience" of combat on a Civil War bat-
tlefield. This knowledge not only served them well in
combat, it created a sociocultural "tradition" that
involved a sensibility and sensitivity to particular con-
textual sounds or "soundmarks" that were recognized
by the soldier in combat situations. This "cultural
sense" has been described by anthropologist Robert
Desjarlais as "a lasting mood or disposition patterned
within the workings of a body" (1992: 150).
Does this "lasting mood" that became patterned
in Civil War combat also last after the death of the
physical body? Does it become a fundamental social
and mental field of an "afterlife conscious mind" that
survives today on a Civil War battlefield? Does it
form an historical field pattern of individual (and
collective) social habits that remain as vestiges and
traces of the "culture of war"? If so, do these fields
become expectations (and manifestations) of what it
is to remain human in a given time and place from a
particular time and place?
I propose that the "auditory streams" that we
have recorded during extensive fieldwork at Burnside
Bridge on the Antietam battlefield in Maryland
(USA) might indicate the survival of some form of
social/mental field as patterned acoustemological
presences of this "culture of war." If this acoustemo-
logical modality, as a sensorial battlefield "external
experience," did become encoded as a field pattern,
then it should manifest as a unique auditory reper-
toire and configuration of the soundscape in particu-
lar battlefield spaces. This additional acoustical ele-
ment should, to use Steven Feld's terminology, "lift up
over" the "soundings" of contemporary sonic ele-
ments and vocalizations of the soundscape, and be
contextual to the "soundmarks" and auditory streams
that would have occurred on the battlefield (in par-
ticular spaces) in 1862.
These "fields" (as "acts"), if they continue today,
were first developed by "habitual" drilling off the
battlefield. They were re-established in the battlefield
soundscape by auditory cues which repeated the
sounds and behaviors of "habitual" drilling
(prompted by bugle calls/drum rolls/commands
(such as "roll-call"), etc.). These "fields," as memory
"tracks," surfaced in battle and produced Inherent
42
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Military Probability (I.M.P.) behaviors, or what the
soldier would have done in particular situations on
the battlefield. It is these cultural (I.M.P. behaviors)
and mental ("battle trance") fields of the "culture of
war" (as "inner states" and "external experiences" in
combat) that survive, I propose, as "forms of life" of
an "afterlife consciousness" on these battlefields.
These "cultural and mental fields," learned from
habits ("drilling"), and reinforced on the battlefield
(through sensory cues/"soundmarks"), begot a rela-
tionship between the acquisition of cultural knowl-
edge (I.M.P. behaviors of the "culture of war") and a
focus on a particular human sensory modality (audi-
tory). This acoustemological sense of knowing how to
act became a natural (albeit habitual and mundane)
process, even in battle, and it became an essential
part in creating a specific human "community" (a
Civil War "company" of soldiers) who identified
themselves as a "band of brothers" (both literally and
figuratively).
The acquisition of these "social and mental
fields" (I.M.P. behaviors/"battle trance") involved a
process, I propose, of "self-resonance" (cf. Sheldrake
2012) in combat, repeating past behaviors learned in
drills and cued to particular "soundmarks." Geurts
(2003:238) states:
"Self-processes, including those of sensory at-
tention and orientation, require effort or
agency and intentionality The sensorium
helps assure that notions of the person both
differ culturally, yet appear natural to those
who hold them."
This "self" process creates, I propose, a tangible link
between shared cultural practices (I.M.P. behaviors of
the "culture of war"), through physical training of
bodily experience and auditory flow (drills/
soundmarks), and our contemporary performances of
these traditions (cultural resonance) in a "ghost exca-
vation" that utilize the repetition of acts of past be-
haviors (I.M.P.) in particular battlefield spaces (or
K.O.C.O.A.).
According to Geurts (2003), there is a "cultural
installation" (2003:85) inside the sensing body that
reaches far beyond the individual (or the cultural
group itself). Do the "cultural and mental fields" of
I.M.P. behaviors of the "culture of war" reach be-
yond the physical death of individual soldiers, the
mid- 19 th c. "culture of war" itself, and what (who)
remain on the battlefield as both residual and interac-
tive presences? Does a Civil War "mentality" (as a
Vol. 4 No. 3
state of mind) survive? I propose that it does, and
involves a learning process of "self-resonance" as de-
veloped by Rupert Sheldrake (cf. 2012).
Recognition and Recall of Consciousness:
Past to Future
Our recent fieldwork at Burnside Bridge on the Anti-
etam battlefield has recorded a series of audio
streams that may be indicative of these sonic ele-
ments of an "afterlife conscious mind" of the "cul-
ture of war" of mid- 19 th c. America. These audio
streams were recorded in specific battlefield spaces
(K.O.C.O.A.). Doing research, as Rupert Sheldrake
states, "we should make as few assumptions as possi-
ble" (2012: 12). During our extensive fieldwork at
Burnside Bridge, we have reiterated the same investi-
gative (resonating) practices of I.M.P. behaviors, and
have recorded the same "voices" responding to these
contextual scenarios, even though these scenarios
were performed months apart (and with different in-
vestigative teams) who had little prior knowledge of
the historical record of the battle and the men who
fought there.
In each subsequent "excavation" at Burnside
Bridge, we have encountered (and interacted with), I
propose, what Sheldrake has termed "evolving hab-
its" (2012:85), as a kind of memory. These habits,
according to Sheldrake, "grow stronger through repe-
tition" (Ibid: 97). Does a manifestation become pre-
sent as a consequence of (and influenced by) what
happened before? Did past drills influence some fu-
ture behavior on the battlefield? Does present investi-
gative acts (that are culturally-resonant to a particular
space and time) influence and cause the manifestation
of past Inherent Military Probability (I.M.P.) behav-
iors of the "culture of war" in the form of contem-
porary intentional acts of an "afterlife conscious
mind" of a Civil War soldier? I propose that they do!
This process of habit formation, what Sheldrake
calls a "morphogenetic field," includes these social
and mental fields. They are defined as:
* Social fields: These " co-ordinate the behav-
ior of social groups" ; and
* Mental fields: These "shape the habits of
mind" (Sheldrake 2012:100).
Do these social and mental fields survive as sonic
elements of interactive "traces" of the "culture of
war" of the American Civil War, and manifest at
43
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Burnside Bridge today as I.M.P. acoustic behaviors of
soldiers that died in battle more than 150 years ago?
If a Civil War consciousness survives the physical
death of men who fought at Burnside Bridge, and we
repeat elements of their "culture of war" during
"ghost excavation," then these fields (social/mental)
could become increasingly habitual as resonating
behaviors (present to past) are repeated. The record-
ing of these "repeating" audio manifestations are not
"paranormal" events, since the "pattern" (as social/
mental fields) was already present here in the past.
The "field pattern" was not "beyond normal"
("paranormal") since it was originally created in
drills, and subsequently enacted on the battlefield.
A "haunting pattern" (the manifestation of these
social/mental fields), normally "absent," becomes
actual, given the reiteration of appropriate circum-
stances (cultural resonance to past fields of the "cul-
ture of war" through our performance practices).
The "patterns" of auditory streams that manifest to-
day may be the social and mental fields that already
existed as habits of the "culture of war" in the past
(during drills and subsequent battles in the American
Civil War).
Sheldrake suggests that mental causation, the
field that shapes the habits of mind, runs from the
present into the past (2012:121). Do our field acts, in
specific battlefield K.O.C.O.A. spaces (tied to situa-
tional I.M.P. behaviors), and cued by specific
"soundmarks," "trigger" the actualization of the past
social fields of I.M.P. behaviors at Burnside Bridge? If
an "afterlife conscious mind" survives the death of
the physical body/brain, then our audio recordings of
the Burnside bridge soundscape might reflect this. If
"minds choose among possible futures" (Sheldrake
2012:129), then these manifestations (coming imme-
diately following our contextual acts and documented
on RT-EVP audio recorders) may be purposeful past
acts that become present as a response to these con-
temporary "cues" (i.e. habits of past minds cued to
present acts).
According to Sheldrake, "minds are closely con-
nected to fields that extend beyond brains in
space. . ..and. . ..in time, linked to the past by morphic
resonance (2012:229). These "minds" as "afterlife
consciousness" remain attached to the social fields of
I.M.P. behaviors of the "culture of war" which may
remain in contemporary space and time due in part,
I propose, to the retention of residual elements that
have been recorded onto the Burnside Bridge land-
scape from the battle that was fought there on Sep-
tember 17, 1862, and survive as a Civil War "sound-
scape" today.
There is no overt_response to those "soundings"
that remain in the form of "residuals" by this "after-
life conscious mind" that we have recorded. Perhaps,
this is because these residuals are not "live" actors.
However, our "ghost excavation" performance prac-
tices (as a form of morphic resonance) appear to
"unearth" a "live" responding presence from the
past. Is it because we .are not perceived as "residuals,"
but rather "live" performers in the (contemporary)
"culture of (the) war"?
In the sense of "external experience" as "appari-
tional experience," does "normal" becomejhe mani-
festation of past_and habitual_acts in the present_due
to morphic resonance? Does this interact, with both
residual and interactive presence, as resonance, to
existing and pre-established and past social fields? If
so, this "normal," then, is not "paranormal." It is
what actually happens in the present based on what
had occurred in the past in particular battlefield
spaces (K.O.C.O.A.).
If this hypothesis is correct, can we then predict
when, where, and how these manifestations will occur
again in the future? If, as philosopher Henri Bergson
(1946) states, memories are direct connections across
time, then these manifestations may be the memories
of I.M.P. habits, "unearthed" during a "ghost excava-
tion," since the enacted (contemporary) scenarios
incorporate resonating acts of I.M.P. habits that
"awaken" past memories that were habitual acts in
the past.
If these memories depend upon morphic reso-
nance, as Sheldrake suggests, then this "afterlife con-
scious mind" (as entities with memories of habitual
I.M.P. acts) is influenced by the morphic resonance
from their own past (as well). This is the "self-
resonance" of habitual drills transferred to the bat-
tlefield, and retained in memory after physical death.
Thus, the "afterlife conscious mind" is awakened in
the future _by a similar resonance (our contextual sce-
narios) that "target," during a "ghost excavation,"
this already_existing past and habitual memory sur-
viving as social and mental fields of I.M.P. behaviors
of the "culture of war."
The manifestation of memory (as remembrance)
occurs as a two-fold process (Sheldrake 2012: 204-
06):
Vol. 4 No. 3
44
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
* Recognition: This is a "similarity between
past experience and previous experience" ;
and
* Recall: This is an "active reconstruction of
the past on the basis of remembered mean-
ings."
Morphic resonance is seen to connect these two
processes, and this connection forms the basis for our
"ghost excavation" methodology, and its application
at Burnside Bridge:
* Recognition: This helped the Civil War sol-
dier in battle. He recognized_the "sound-
mark" cues learned_from drills, taking appro-
priate actions on the batdefield (I.M.P.).
These remain as "vestiges" and "traces" of
the "culture of war" at Burnside Bridge;
* Recall: This allowed us to "unearth" this pre-
established memory of social and mental
fields in specific battlefield spaces
(K.O.C.O.A.) by using appropriate behav-
ioral acts (I.M.P.), cued to particular sound-
markSi
These recall acts were recognized by the "afterlife
conscious mind" of these remaining entities as
learned past acts. They manifest on the contempo-
rary batdefield where they were previously recog-
nized by these soldiers in battie from previous habits
learned in drills.
Sheldrake believes that "self-resonance from an
individual's own past is more specific and.... more
effective" (2012:211). In locations that contain "ves-
tiges" ("residuals") of the "culture of war" (such as
those we recorded along the Rohrbach Farm Road,
an avenue of approach for combat advances in
K.O.C.O.A. space), as elements of "self-resonance,"
could also account for the continuing presence of
interactive_manifestations there in the form of an
"afterlife conscious mind" that survived physical
death.
The recognition of these residual battie sounds
(perhaps related to the topography: water, and the
stone bridge) could enable a recall of memory of
I.M.P. behaviors, in this (and other) K.O.C.O.A.
spaces, by those entities who survive as an "afterlife
consciousness." Our contextual scenarios, as the use
of this recognition_of I.M.P. behaviors, would also
Vol. 4 No. 3
resonate and serve as the stimulation for the recall of
these behaviors in battlefield spaces.
How can manifestations, such as this "afterlife
consciousness" and related "residuals" (perceived as
"ghosts"), exist in contemporary reality 150 years
after the battie? Sheldrake states that "minds are
closely connected to fields that extend beyond brains
in space. . ..and. . ..in time, linked to the past by mor-
phic resonance" (2012:229). When these soldiers
died, their "mind" as a self-organizing system of
I.M.P. behaviors that remain on the battlefield, be-
came "re-animated" by "self-resonance" from their
own past (the residual sounds recorded on the land-
scape) and from the future: the "ghost excavation"
practices that we enact there. This "presence," as
sonically recorded, has manifested, time and again,
during_our performance practices in "ghost excava-
tions" on this battlefield.
I propose that a mutual learning process (their
recognition/ our use of recall) is evolving and trans-
forming the contemporary soundscape at Burnside
Bridge. This process includes:
* A past recognition of habits established in
drills;
* A past recall that is reinforced by continuing
present manifestations of residuals that are
recognized;
* A present performance practice that recog-
nizes the importance of resonating acts in
specific battlefield spaces (K.O.C.O.A.); and
* A past recognition of these practices as simi-
lar to those that occurred at Burnside Bridge
in battie on September 17, 1862, and in drills
that recall I.M.P. behaviors of the "culture of
war."
Those manifestations that occur in conjunction with
investigative resonating acts, in particular
K.O.C.O.A. spaces, is, I propose, a form ofjearning
Do the increase in the frequency of these manifesta-
tions, during subsequent "ghost excavations," attest to
this learning process? Does the use of contextual
"soundmarks," as "triggers," reinforce this learning
process? Do our contextual acts, portraying those in
command of troops in particular K.O.C.O.A. spaces,
identify us as "instructors" in the principles of I.M.P.
behaviors in the "culture of war"? Julia Hendon is
an archaeologist, whose book (2010) examines the
45
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
connections between social identity and social mem-
ory using archaeological research, states that there is
a "close connection between identity and memory,
once the one (identity) becomes something recreated
over time" (2010:14). She shows how "memory
communities" assert connections between the past
and the present. Has our "identity" been established
by continuously repeating the contextual acts (and
associated soundmarks) learned in drills and repeated
on the battlefield in continuing "ghost excavations
there? Has our resonating acts linked to a past
"memory community" of the "culture of war" of the
American Civil War?
A morphogenetic field has been established, I
propose, through this learning and "excavation"
process, and the "field" spreads through time to other
presences, becoming a multi-layered "memory com-
munity" that may remain, and may be expanding, at
Burnside Bridge. This means that these other mani-
festations, during subsequent "ghost excavations,"
may be a result of recognition and recall as an ex-
panding morphogenetic field which further extends
the contemporary reality of what (and who) remains
at Burnside Bridge as "this happens here" now from
what happened there on September 17, 1862.
This possible learning in the "afterlife" is not, I
propose,_"paranormal" or "supernatural," but learn-
ing within the framework of what these "ghosts" al-
ready know: the "culture of war" of the American
Civil War. Their manifestations are not confirmation
bias as an expectation of what should occur when
resonance is used as an investigative practice. It is a
pre-disposition, a form of "self-resonance" from a
pre-established "field" laid down in battle, and in
prior drilling. Do these aural responses and "ques-
tions" (such as our recording of "Captain, Is that You
Captain"?) represent "learning"? I propose that they
most certainly do! You can hear these audio tracks at
www.ghostexcavation.com (Antietam audio).
Conclusion
Our continuing fieldwork at Burnside Bridge, and
other sites, is an "audiography" of the "culture of
war" that remain as vestiges and traces on battlefield
soundscapes today. These "soundings" are embed-
ded, as part of a layering of presence, a continued
being in the world in the form of an expanded reality
in these landscapes. It is a "normal" ethnographic
sensorium of an "afterlife consciousness" that is im-
printed on these battlefield spaces. This has created a
"hauntscape" of multiple immiscible social and men-
tal fields that potentially can only be accessed, on a
consistent basis, through cultural resonance. This as-
sumption implies "the existence of an essential and
fundamental relationship between ghosts, mind, and
consciousness" (Beichler 201 1:30).
Finally, one may ask why these "ghosts" (as an
"afterlife consciousness"), if they exist, remain on the
battlefield where they died on September 17, 1862.
There are several possibilities. I will only mention
(briefly) a few here. These include the following:
* Military Orders;
* The concept of the "Good Death"
Standard military orders are significant, but often
overlooked in a battlefield "apparitional experience,"
especially the following:
* "to quit my post when properly relieved";
* "to be especially watchful at night"; and
* "to talk to no one except in the line of duty."
Do our "ghost excavation" performance practices at
night, and contextual to "identities" affiliated with
commanding officers, allow for the manifestation of
an "afterlife consciousness" because soldiers, those
who remain "attached" to their duties, communicate
with us "in the line of duty"? Do these soldiers re-
main because they were not accorded the rites and
rituals of the "Good Death"? According to Clinton
(2009), "the deathbed of a loved one was perhaps the
most hallowed of Nineteenth Century ritual settings"
(2009:4). The "Good Death" was a prepared death,
surrounded by family at home, and a burial in the
family plot. The American Civil War battlefield
changed that. The ritual was never completed, in
many instances, for the soldiers who fought and died
at Burnside Bridge. Are these manifestations the "af-
terlife conscious minds" of those soldiers who remain
on duty, are vigilant at night, only communicate to
individuals they_identify as their comrades and/ or
officers, and who never experienced the "Good
Death"? This is the theory that I am currently work-
ing with, as we continue to investigate the manifesta-
tions of past presence, as "afterlife conscious mind"
Vol. 4 No. 3
46
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
of the "culture of war" at Burnside Bridge and other
battlefields.
Bibliography
Beichler, James E. (2011). Apparitions R'Us: Far More
Than Just a Ghost of a Chance In Academy of
Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, Inc. 2011
Annual Conference Proceedings. Bloomfield,
Connecticut, pp. 24-38.
Bergson, Henri (1946). The Creative Mind. New York:
Philosophical Library.
Chion, Michel (1994). Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Clinton, Catherine (2009). Mrs. Lincoln: A Life. New
York: HarperLuxe.
Hendon, Julia A. (2010). Houses in a Landscape: Memory
and Everyday Life in Mesoamenca. Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press.
Jordania, Joseph (20 1 1). Why Do People Sing? Music in
Human Evolution. Logos.
Sheldrake, Rupert (2012). The Science Delusion: Freeing
the Spirit of Enquiry. London: Hodder & Stough-
ton, Ltd..
Tucker, Philip Thomas (2000). Burnside's Bridge: The
Climatic Struggle of the 2 nd and 20"' Georgia at Antie-
tam Creek. Stackpole Books: Mechanicsburg, Pa.
Desjarlais, Robert (1992). Body and Emotion: The Aes-
thetics Wellness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Geurts, Kathryn Linn (2003). Culture and the Senses:
Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Biography
John Sabol is an archaeologist,
cultural anthropologist, actor and
author. As an archaeologist, he
has documented and recorded the
manifestations of past sound-
scapes at haunted ruins. As an
actor, he has appeared in many
movies, TV series and educa-
tional TV programming, includ-
ing the Sci-Fi classic, Dune (1984),
and the A&E TV series, Paranormal
State. He has written 16 books on his fieldwork,
methodology, and his personal experiences on loca-
tion filming and his work at haunted ruins around the
world.
exploring the
extraordinary
Fifth Conference
20th-22nd September 2013, York, UK
For more information visit
http://etenetwork.weebly.com
Vol. 4 No. 3
47
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Processes of Experience
Donnalee Dox
In contemporary, vernacular practices from sha-
manic drumming to contemplative dance, the process
of integrating mental and physical capacities is often
the hrst condition for opening to extraordinary expe-
riences. This chapter approaches experience through
processes by which people identify and cultivate ex-
periences as special (Taves 2009). The chapter first
sets out methodological considerations for studying
experiences cultivated in contemporary, vernacular
practices, and then focuses on the process by which a
conceptual metaphor intertwines with physical action
in the experience of 'opening the heart center' in
Anusara yoga.
Modern yoga presents innumerable ways of pars-
ing and problematizing the experience of mind-body
integration. An ethnographic study would reveal the
range and nuances of individual experiences. A re-
view of yoga styles would compare the experiential
goals and processes of different yoga styles — from
relaxing the body, to deep meditation, to mental con-
trol over the body. This chapter isolates one specific
experience to access the processes at work in its culti-
vation.
Inside Knowledge
The subjectivity of experience — the inner life of the
mind and the body — has long challenged the critical
distance required of scholarly approaches to observ-
able phenomena. How can we know the insides of
other people (Taves 2009:63; Slingerland 2008:27,
151, 304)? The inaccessibility of inner experience has
proved formidable even in the humanities, which
long ago exposed the dark ambiguities of the Roman-
tic soul to the light of identity politics, and showed
the workings of discourse in the poetics of mysticism.
Without representational images, neuroscience
attempts to explain experience by its physiological
correlates, the gaze of critical scholarship turns to
social and cultural forms with which people shape
experience. Expressive forms become the decipher-
able effects of experience, the sites available for
analysis and discussion: descriptions, narratives, art,
Vol. 4 No. 3
music, dance, and rituals. Practices are especially
valuable sites because they encompass expressive
forms and are the very means by which people culti-
vate experience. Modern hatha yoga is one such
practice. Yoga's status as a cultural phenomenon has
focused critical attention on social, economic, and
cultural aspects of its popularity. Less attention has
been given to how the practice of yoga identifies and
cultivates special experiences.
Approaching Yoga as a
Cultural Phenomenon
The shear number of yoga studios, training pro-
grams, websites, classes, styles, popular market books,
academic studies, and films about yoga affirm yoga's
status as a cultural phenomenon. As a fitness and ex-
ercise regimen, yoga is taught in health clubs and
gyms and the purported benefits to psychological
wellbeing have moved yoga into schools, prisons, and
businesses. Yoga has been a flashpoint for Christian
sects in America, which may reject yoga in rhetoric
reminiscent of Nineteenth Century colonialism, or
refashion yoga postures to align with Christian
themes Jain 2010). Appropriations of yoga have mo-
tivated concerns over its origins in Hinduism (Vitello
2010), while magazines such as Yoga Journal promote
yoga as a modern lifestyle. Yoga crosses multiple cul-
tural registers.
Yoga's popularity has also prompted numerous
scholarly studies. These trace the complex routes
yoga has traveled and the ways its associations with
Indian culture have been deployed, adapted, and
imagined (Singleton 2010; Love 2010; White 2009;
Singleton and Byrne 2008; De Michelis 2004; Alter
2004; Symon 2011). Parallel to this culturally-
oriented research, experimental research corrobo-
rates many of the anecdotal benefits to physical and
mental health that draw many people to yoga
(Hasselle-Newcombe 2005:311-2). In particular, the
calming effects people experience suggest the effect of
yoga practice on the autonomic nervous system, with
therapeutic applications ranging from reducing in-
48
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
flammation of blood vessels to relieving depression
and extending lifespan (Streeter et al. 2012). The
absorption of yoga into psychology raises concerns
about the universalizing tendencies that posit the
human mind as a cross-cultural constant.
Yoga is big business and its commercial success
has prompted critiques of yoga's failure to affect
Western materialism (Philip 201 1). Yoga offers a 'pa-
cific spirituality' in the image of ancient Eastern cul-
tures, which is projected back into Western minds
and bodies (Bender & McRoberts 2012:14). Critical
studies investigate how the quest to de-stress the mind
and sculpt the body serves the goals of consumer
capitalism, and study how consumerism drives the
branding of yoga styles, the corporatization of yoga
studios, and yoga-related products from mats to jew-
elry (Philip 201 1).
Yoga as Experiential Practice
The complexities of cross-cultural transmission and
trans-religious syncretism continue to motivate criti-
cal inquiry into how the image of an exotic, passive
East shapes the appeal of yoga in a marketplace of
easy spirituality (Carette & King 2005:1 19). However,
as Paul Heelas observes, 'it could well be the case that
what is taking place within a yoga group, for exam-
ple, is too 'rich' for the language of consumption to
handle' (2008:98). What is taking place may also ex-
ceed taxonomies that situate yoga (and similar prac-
tices) only in social and economic domains. While all
experience is arguably constructed by social envi-
ronments and discourses (such as 'lifestyle' or
'health'), inquiring directly into experience may yield
potent reformulations of the boundaries those tax-
onomies proscribe.
Yoga's place in the 'subjective turn' of the early
2 1 st century is less well researched than its social, cul-
tural, and therapeutic aspects (Partridge 2005). How-
ever, its contemplative potential remains vital to the
experiences cultivated in its practice (Richards 2010).
Suzanne Hasselle-Newcombe's (2005) sociological
study of Iyengar style yoga in Britain suggests that for
the majority of practitioners doing yoga constitutes 'a
unique act of withdrawing energy from work and
family responsibilities' (311). This experience of in-
wardness can be taken as evidence of the focus on
the self that characterizes a modern 'culture of well-
being' (Heelas 2008). Yet even in its recontextualiza-
tion from an ancient ascetic tradition to a modern
social phenomenon, yoga seems to retain its function
as 'a distinctive space for introversion and reflection'
Vol. 4 No. 3
(Hasselle-Newcombe 2005:311). Against the de-
mands for self-presentation, socializing, and rapid
cognition that characterize modern, technologically-
oriented cultures, yoga identifies interiority as a spe-
cial kind of experience, and cultivates it.
Maria Kapsali calls for a theoretical framework
'that could take into account both the various ideolo-
gies within/according to which yoga currently oper-
ates, as well as the personal psychophysical experi-
ences that practitioners may have' (2012:176). Amid
the appropriations and distortions wrought by yoga's
situation in Western cultural norms, how do the ex-
periences cultivated in its practice press against nor-
malizing frameworks for experience such as psychol-
ogy, consumerism, and therapeutics? Psychology may
be the most familiar model for inner experience in
modern Western cultures. However, whereas psy-
chology processes experience through language, yoga
reverses that direction by cultivating experience at the
intersection of physical and conceptual processes. By
what specific processes do practices like modern yoga
intertwine people's bodies and minds in and as expe-
rience? To what extent are the tools of consciousness,
especially language, part of experience rather than
mediating experience? What methods might pursue
these questions, and what knowledge would such in-
vestigation yield?
Entering Experience
Critical inquiry relies on a cerebral orientation to
experience. The question of experience may require
a bodily-engaged approach. 'We must not assume
cognition to be purely internal, symbolic, computa-
tional, and disembodied,' writes cognitive scientist
Raymond Gibbs, 'but seek out the gross and detailed
ways that language and thought are inextricably
shaped by embodied action' (2005:9). This porous
interaction between mental and physical activity con-
stitutes the corporeal ether of awareness, which peo-
ple press into the forms (language, performances, vis-
ual art, practices) that articulate experience. Applied
to methods of inquiry, this interaction suggests fluid
movement among first-person descriptive accounts of
experience, second-person observation of effects of
experience, and third-person analysis and representa-
tion.
Kristy Nabhan-Warren asks scholars investigating
religious experience to 'turn to their bodies as sources
of deep knowledge' and 'take embodied ethnography
seriously when they write up their findings,' without
privileging 'mind knowledge over body knowledge'
49
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
(2011:385). Kimerer LaMothe suggests that the lack
of bodily investment in scholarship hinders ap-
proaches to religious experience. She advocates for
critical sensibilities that go beyond reading bodies as
texts to engage bodies in motion. LaMothe argues, 'in
order to advance attention to the bodily dimension of
religious life, scholars must be willing to acknowledge
the role played by their own bodily lives in the proc-
ess of studying religion' (2008:574). For anthropolo-
gist Thomas Csordas, this stance posits embodiment
as 'an indeterminate methodological field' in which
bodily experience is 'the existential ground of culture
and self (2002:219). Csordas calls for suspending
reliance on either biology or culture as frameworks
for understanding bodies to take embodiment as 'an
experiential understanding of being-in-the-world'
(2002:241). These approaches open space for attend-
ing to the corporeal, affective, sensory, and imagina-
tive components of experience in contemporary
practices.
Even as current research situates modern yoga's
popularity in Western cultural norms, (namely con-
sumerism, psychology, and therapeutics), yoga in
practice negotiates those norms. The triangulation of
mind, body, and spirit in contemporary, vernacular
practices identifies an experience that collapses this
three-part linguistic formulation. The question is,
how? Approaching experience as a process does not
reduce experience to social constructions or physio-
logical explanation. This approach neither advocates
for the phenomenological status of experience nor
denies it. Rather, it seeks the ways practices like mod-
ern yoga shape the integration of mental, physical,
and spiritual capacities as registers of experience, and
identify that integration as a special kind of experi-
ence.
Experience in Word and Action
The metaphor of 'opening the heart center' in Anu-
sara yoga articulates a particular interplay between
mental and physical capacities. It joins physical sensa-
tion to mental receptivity. An 'open heart center' can
manifest as emotion, a feeling of the physical body
coming into alignment, heightened awareness or in-
sight, suspension of judgment, a shift in perception,
feeling a part of the body previously not available to
consciousness, telepathic sensitivity to other people,
feelings of gratitude or compassion. The metaphor
also identifies 'the heart center' as the experience of a
self that is not bound by external norms (social roles,
identity, culturally imposed concepts).
Vol. 4 No. 3
The next two sections focus narrowly on the
process of 'opening the heart center.' In practice, the
'heart center' structures a bodily experience, which
gives rise to the descriptive metaphor. However,
rather than make the body an object of consciousness
or seek pre -linguistic consciousness, this process reor-
ganizes people's conceptual, corporeal, and meta-
physical capacities into registers of experience. A
close reading of Anusara's Teacher Training Manual
shows how this metaphor shapes and becomes part of
corporeal experience. An embodied reading of the
physicality involved in cultivating the 'open heart
center' shows the concept and the body intertwined
in the experience of 'opening the heart center.'
Close Reading:
The Metaphor of the Heart Center
The Manual defines Anusara as a system that aligns
the physical body with 'a non-dual Tantric philoso-
phy that is epitomized by a 'celebration of the heart"
[italics added] (Friend 2009:20). With regard to expe-
rience, the metaphor of the heart center functions in
multiple, sometimes contradictory or tautological,
ways. The heart is variously a container for the self,
an object that can be experienced, a conduit for ex-
perience, the site of experience, and experience itself.
By doing yoga people express their 'specific heart
qualities or virtues' (Friend 2009:93). The heart cen-
ter contains three aspects of a person's essence: per-
sonal moral qualities (modesty or steadfastness), spiri-
tual ideals (union with the divine; 'Shakti' energy),
and emotions (anger, love). Postures are a way to 'ex-
perience joy in the heart' [italics added] (Friend
2009:93). The heart has 'two fundamental states,'
which are 'happiness and unhappiness' (Friend
2009:27). Understanding the postures as 'heart-
oriented' suggests that the heart center itself becomes
a sensory organ with access to a particular kind of
experience, or that the heart becomes its own kind of
consciousness (Friend 2009:21). The Manual identi-
fies an experience of being 'in the flow' which 'is
simply to open our hearts with love to the present
moment without clinging or pushing' [italics added]
(Friend 2009:20). These ambiguities blur physical
feeling with an intellectual concept.
In practice, body and mind are reciprocal capaci-
ties. The physicality of the postures opens 'the heart
center,' but practitioners have agency and responsibil-
ity. Bodies respond to a disposition of mind ('inten-
tion' or Attitude'). With the intention to 'soften and
expand' the heart, a person can 'release or dissolve
50
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
self-induced [physical and mental] tensions and
[physical and mental] limitations, and to open to the
greatness and the tremendous divine potential within'
(Friend 2009:104). A 'pure spiritual expression from
the heart,' according to the Manual, gives a posture
'its power for deep inner transformation' (Friend
2009:26). That transformational 'power of the heart'
relies as much on a person's intention as the physical
effort of the practice. According to the Manual, the
'power of the heart' is the force behind every action
or full expression of a posture (Friend 2009:26).
There is, thus, a paradox built into the metaphor
of the 'heart center.' The agency that affects the
heart also comes from the heart. In describing Anu-
sara yoga as a 'heart-oriented' practice, the Manual
holds out the potential for 'inner transformational
power' when the heart center is physically expanded
in a posture and when a practitioner is mentally re-
ceptive to the effects of the physical practice (Friend
2009:106). At the same time, the physical effort that
holds a body in any posture requires a practitioner's
'surrender or open-heartedness' for the posture to be
effective (Friend 2009:28). In this way, the physical
practice is invested with a metaphysical, quasi-
spiritual sensation of an open heart (Friend
2009:101).
Anusara's metaphor of the 'heart center' strips
away overtly religious, meditative, or spiritual con-
texts for yoga, though the valence remains in the lan-
guage of transformation, spirituality, and metaphysi-
cal power. Equating the heart with a sense of self has
an obvious resonance with the popular construction
of the modern self as a site of transformation and
healing, with the added ethical imperative of aligning
the physical body with social, as well as individual,
wellbeing. The lack of explicit reference to Hindu
sources in the Manual distances Anusara from its In-
dian roots.
Selective references to Hinduism, however, pro-
vide a conceptual backdrop, they contextualize 'open-
ing the heart center' as a special experience. Allusions
to Tantra, Shavism, and Bhakti elide spirituality with
feeling good as a timeless quality of experience rather
than specifically Hindu. Traditional Anusara classes,
for example, begin with chanting in Sanskrit the
Anusara Yoga Opening Invocation' (Friend 2009:iii).
The Manual's translation renders the original text's
reference to Lord Siva in the phrase namah shivaya
gurave as 'luminous Teacher within and without'
(Friend 2009:iii). The words come from the Nira-
lamba Upanishad, a minor or general Upanishad
from the Sukla Yajur Veda (Pradeep 2008: 124). What
Vol. 4 No. 3
Anusara practitioners chant is half of the first short
section of the Upanishad, and not included in most
translations. The words, intended for people on a
renunciant yogic path who lack a guru, introduce
forty-one questions about the nature of Brahman.
This excerpt out of context is inconsistent with Anu-
sara's purportedly Tantric emphasis on non-dual em-
bodiment. In my observation, however, the inconsis-
tency is not important to practitioners. Rather, the
words function as inspiration to pursue self knowl-
edge through the yoga practice.
The metaphor of the 'heart center' raises the
spectre of exoticization and the problem of perenni-
alism. Though they are not studied in the practice,
Anusara's identification of the heart center as the site
of self knowledge resonates with traditions in classi-
cal yoga. Compilations of source texts, as well as
Patanjali's Yoga Sutra (200 BCE) and the Hatha Yoga
Pradipika (14th c. CE), are readily available in Eng-
lish translations often sold in studios. Most prominent
are those by George Feuerstein (1947-2012), a practi-
tioner and translator based in Canada who grounded
his yoga teaching in Hindu traditions, and Mircea
Eliade (1907-1986), whose scholarship at the Univer-
sity of Chicago mapped religious experience as an
academic field. These compilations do not require a
specialists' knowledge Sanskrit or Hindu traditions, or
the ability to parse Vedic thought, Tantra, Shaivism,
Vaishanavism, and Bhakti as historical developments.
Drawing indirectly on these complex philosophical
traditions and distilling them into a simplistic formu-
lation, Anusara's metaphor of the 'heart center'
shapes the aspirations of the practice as experiential,
not intellectual: a felt sense emanating from and ani-
mating the center of the chest.
Embodied Reading:
Physical Movement and
The Heart Center
The body is the site for a register of experience that is
simultaneously conceptual and corporeal. Anusara's
approach is biomechanical. The 'heart center' refers
not to the heart muscle but the center of the chest
between the sternum and the spine, the mediastinum
where the bones and muscles of the ribcage encase
the organs of oxygen exchange (Abrahams
2010:186-87). The bottom of this physical area,
roughly the lateral plane of the relaxed diaphragm, is
considered a place of physical and psychic or spiritual
power. A practitioner is taught to draw kinesthetic
energy inward toward this center and radiate non-
51
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
physical energy outward as the body moves into a
posture (Friend 2009:31). Practitioners learn to 'sof-
ten' or 'melt' the heart center from within the body
and 'open' or 'lift' the heart center. These are the
subtle, internal moves that may prompt release of
emotions, relaxing of mental concepts, feelings of
receptivity, or a sense of receptivity.
Mechanical actions broaden the ribcage, which
creates the physiological context for internally melt-
ing, softening, lifting, and opening the heart center as
well as for sensing the heartbeat and breath. This
process of moving consciousness into the body as the
body emerges as a kind of consciousness has the po-
tential to shift practitioners' conventional organiza-
tion of self as mind and body. The 'heart center'
takes on the capacity for consciousness, which con-
ventionally belongs to the conceptualizing, narrative
capacities of the mind. An embodied reading of how
one posture works cannot take us directly into peo-
ple's experience, but it can illustrate one process by
which this yoga practice identifies 'opening the heart
center' as special for practitioners.
The backbend is familiar to gymnasts, dancers,
and other athletic performers as well as to yoga prac-
titioners. Yoga names this basic posture 'upward bow'
or Udhrva Dhanurasana. From a supine position, the
feet and hands press the chest, abdomen, and hips
upward, into the shape of a bow with the floor as the
bow's taut string. Beyond the mindful engagement
with the body required to hold the posture, the meta-
phor of the 'heart center' organizes the integration of
mental and physical capacities, which distinguishes
yoga's 'upward bow' from a contortionist's or gym-
nast's backbend.
'Upward bow' can produce a range of sensatVions
that might be experienced as revealing a deep and
profound part of the self. Practitioners are taught to
pull the heads of the upper armbones (humerus) into
the shoulder sockets toward the heart center. In an
upside down orientation, working against gravity, this
kinesthetic action can release the upper palate in re-
sponse to the pull of the trapezius muscles. One re-
sponse to this physical change can be a relaxation in
the forehead, or a sense of light in the region of the
light-regulating pineal gland and which the yogic
chakra system identifies as the 'third eye' (Maxwell
2009). 'Upward bow' pushes the thoracic vertebrae,
which are the least amenable to flexion toward the
sternum, and extends the top of the sternum through
the shoulders. This action can release the internal
intercostals, which are less accessible to conscious
control than the back, arms and legs. This unfamiliar
Vol. 4 No. 3
release can produce a shift in awareness (Kaminof
2007:203).
'Upward bow' also disrupts the familiar auto-
nomic patterns of breathing. It expands the medi-
asternum front to back and side to side, changing the
familiar feeling of expanding with an inhalation and
contracting on an exhalation. With the top of the
head parallel to the floor and the ribcage inverted,
the flow of the breath feels reversed — inhaling moves
the breath up (toward the ceiling) rather than in the
familiar downward direction. Extending the spine
moves the ribs farther apart, even as exhalation draws
the ribs together (Coulter 2001:281). This position
also orients the eyes so that no part of the body may
be visible, disorienting familiar perceptual patterns
and the ability to conceptually orient the environ-
ment around the body which can prompt shifts in
perception. Extending the psoas muscle, the longest
muscle of the body running from the bottom of the
thorax through the pelvis to the thighs, can have the
effect of releasing tension in the organs protected by
the rib cage and yield a sense of the entire 'heart cen-
ter' relaxing, metaphorically 'opening'
Postures that open the front of the thorax and
shoulders are particularly likely to generate experi-
ences such as sudden rushes of emotion, and the
Teacher Training Manual gives guidance for dealing
with emotional responses to postures (Friend
2009:80). Whether or not practitioners connect these
experiences to traditions of the heart as a source of
illumination described in source texts on yogic medi-
tation, in this practice the 'heart center' takes on ex-
periential significance in this practice in a language of
inner transformation, celebration, knowing a pure or
true self, and openness to divinity.
Opening Experience
In numerous vernacular practices — yoga, t'ai chi,
contemplative dance, martial arts, shamanic drum-
ming are but a few — people cultivate registers of ex-
perience that are neither neurologically top-down nor
bottom-up and which do not conform to conven-
tional organizations of experience as mental or bod-
ily activity. A process approach to these experiences
opens a range of questions into the subtleties of ex-
perience. How do practices differ in the ways they
constitute mind and body interaction? Modern yoga,
the example presented here, has been analyzed for its
appropriation of Indian religious culture and history
even as yoga is critiqued for its investment in Western
culture. How do those cultural and discursive influ-
52
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ences shape experiences as special? When does expe-
rience resist those shapes and create new shapes?
There are always gaps between the social and
economic contexts that proscribe meaning and the
internal sensations people experience. What is the
process between the act of putting the body in a yoga
posture and identifying the experience of an illumi-
nating 'opening'? How do special experiences such as
'opening the heart center' become the basis for
knowledge, social interaction, discourses, and institu-
tional organizations? How might special experiences
morph into ideologies, possibly transforming libera-
tory experiences into mechanisms of control? How
do these experiences challenge models in which the
mind acts on the body or the body influences mental
capacities?
Finally, what epistemological queries might such
practices be making? David Maxwell asserts that
there is 'valid truth in the experience of yogis that
can provide important information concerning com-
plex aspects of our human condition' (2009:819).
The experience of an 'open heart center,' for exam-
ple, like the proposition of a 'heart charkra,' asks how
non-physical properties (for Anusara 'Shakti energy')
interact with physical bodies (Maxwell 2009:809).
What might such a proposition offer taxonomies that
distinguish mental from physical activity, or between
scholarship and embodied practices? In what ways
does language participate in experience, rather drive
a wedge of critical distance?
The intertwining of corporeality and conscious-
ness in the construction of knowledge so prominent
in vernacular practices distorts the boundary between
constructing knowledge from observation and deriv-
ing knowledge from experience. Maria Kapsali sum-
marizes the challenge this distortion presents specifi-
cally with regard to Modern Postural Yoga (MPY):
'the number of discourses, psychophysical possibili-
ties, and metaphysical expectations that operate not
only within the space of practice, but in a number of
similar disciplines, point toward a need to reconfigure
these terms that MPY loves to employ but hates to
define' (2012:176). Observation and practice meet in
a reciprocal desire for knowledge of experience and
the experience of knowledge. The task now is to bet-
ter understand the processes that constitute special
experiences and embrace the challenges these experi-
ential practices might pose to conventional models of
cultural analysis.
Biography
Donnalee Dox received
her Ph.D. from the Uni-
versity of Minnesota in
1995. Her primary re-
search area is European
theatre in the 1 0th-1 5th
centuries, and her sec-
ondary area is contem-
porary religious perform-
ance practices. Dr. Dox
has published on music,
dance and theatre in
journals such as Theatre
History Studies, Theatre
Research International, Frontiers: A Journal of Woman
Studies, and The Journal of Dramatic Theatre and Criti-
cism. She has presented papers at numerous medieval
conferences, including Convivium, the Arizona Center for
Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Medieval Acad-
emy, and the International Congress on Medieval Studies.
In the Department of Performance Studies, she teaches
script analysis and dramaturgy, and is developing new in-
terdisciplinary courses.
New Publication of Interest:
The Devil Within: Possession and
Exorcism in the Christian West
Brian P. Levack
Vol. 4 No. 3
53
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
The Brain and Spiritual Experiences:
Towards a Neuroscientific Hermeneutic
Andrew B. Newberg
Spiritual experiences are fundamental to the human
interpretation of the world around us. Historically,
spiritual experiences appear to have laid the founda-
tion for religious belief systems, as well as moral, po-
litical, and cultural systems. In the past twenty years,
an expanding amount of research into the brain
mechanisms of spiritual experiences has provided
scholars with new information about the nature of
these experiences. But this research also continues to
propel us towards the development of a neuroepiste-
mological perspective on human experience, and par-
ticularly the experience of reality. Hybrid fields such
as neurotheology have arisen in order to better assess
the implications of studying spiritual experiences
from a neuroscientific perspective. Neurotheology
argues that combining science with religious and
spiritual phenomena can provide a variety of new
approaches to the study of human experience and its
implications for our ability to understand reality. This
might lead to a parallel philosophical field that could
be referred to as a neuroscientific hermeneutics. Such
a neurohermeneutics argues that human experience,
including spiritual experience, is highly influenced,
although not necessarily caused, by the brain. Thus,
developing an understanding of the relationship be-
tween the brain and subjective experience will help us
to better understand how we interpret experiences,
make meaning, and relate that meaning through ab-
stract thought and language.
This paper presents an overview of some of the
research on spiritual experiences that myself and
other colleagues have been pursuing over the past
two decades. But, more importantly, this paper will
also consider a neurohermeneutical approach to hu-
man experience. We will reflect on the ontological
status of human subjective experience in general, and
spiritual experiences in particular. It must be noted at
the outset that while some of this discussion will ap-
pear to involve a materialistic reductionism, the im-
plications of such a methodology, in the light of neu-
rohermeneutics and neuroepistemology leaves us
Vol. 4 No. 3
with an ontology that is anything but reductionistic.
These considerations, however, must await the con-
clusion of this paper.
The Neuropsychology
of Spiritual Experience
There is clearly a wide variety of spiritual experi-
ences. Ninian Smart distinguished between the expe-
rience of Rudolf Otto's 'wholly other' and the inter-
nal sense of ineffable unity defined as a mystical ex-
perience, predominantly although not exclusively, in
Asian traditions. Ninian Smart (1969; 1978) has ar-
gued that certain sects of Hinduism, Buddhism, and
Taoism differ markedly from prophetic religions such
as Judaism and Islam and from religions related to
the prophetic -like Christianity, in that the religious
experience most characteristic of the former is 'mys-
tical' whereas that most characteristic of the latter is
'numinous.' Of these two terms, it is the numinous
that Smart seems to have an easier time explaining
since it obviously arises more spontaneously out of
Western religious traditions. W.T Stace (1961) went
further by distinguishing between what he calls extro-
vertive mystical experiences and introvertive mystical
experiences. Extrovertive mystical experiences are
distinguished by a unifying vision in which all things
are perceived as one and there is an apprehension of
the One as an inner subjectivity or life in all things.
Introvertive mystical experiences are distinguished by
including a unitary consciousness or awareness which
is nonspatial and nontemporal.
With regard to the continuum of spiritual experi-
ences, and based upon a neuropsychological analysis,
unitary states appear to play a crucial role and we will
consider this in more detail below. While it is difficult
to define what makes a given experience 'spiritual,'
the sense of having a union with some higher power
or ultimate reality seems a crucial part of spiritual
experiences. To that end, this union helps reduce ex-
istential anxiety as well as provide a sense of control
over the environment (d'Aquili 1978; 1998). Impor-
54
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
tantly, describing the phenomenology of subjective
spiritual experiences includes a sense of the unity of
reality that is at least somewhat greater than the base-
line perception of unity in day to day life (d'Aquili
1986). This may be related to altered functioning of
the brain structures typically involved in helping to
construct the self/ other dichotomy Usually the self/
other dichotomy functions to help us distinguish our
self from the rest of the external world. I have sug-
gested that the left superior parietal lobe may play a
critical role in establishing the self/other dichotomy
Joseph 1996). This dichotomy is normally based
upon input from all of the sensory systems. In cases
of meditation, my colleagues and I have suggested,
and found brain imaging evidence for, a differential
blocking, or 'deafferentation,' of input into the supe-
rior parietal lobe which progressively diminishes the
strength of the self/other dichotomy (d'Aquili and
Newberg 1993; Newberg et al. 2001). Thus, if the
continuum of spiritual experience heavily relies on
the progressive sense of unity, this should be associ-
ated with progressive blocking of input into the supe-
rior parietal lobe. Such a physiological change should
be associated with an increasing sense of unity over
multiplicity. In addition, the right superior parietal
lobe is involved in orienting ourselves within three
dimensional space (Newberg 2010). The blocking of
sensory input into this structure may result in the al-
terations in the sense of space and time that are often
described during spiritual experiences. Thus, both the
left and right superior parietal lobes are likely in-
volved in spiritual experiences.
At the extreme end of the continuum of spiritual
experiences is the state of Absolute Unitary Being
which is described in the mystical literature of all the
world's great religions (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999).
When a person is in that state he or she loses all sense
of discrete being and even the difference between self
and other is obliterated. There is no sense of the
passing of time, and all that remains is a perfect time-
less undifferentiated consciousness. When such a state
is suffused with positive affect (i.e. emotional content),
there is a tendency to describe the experience, after
the fact, as personal. Such experiences are often de-
scribed as a perfect union with God (the Unio mys-
tica of the Christian tradition), or else the perfect
manifestation of God in the Hindu tradition. When
such experiences are accompanied by neutral affect
they tend to be described, after the fact, as imper-
sonal. These states are described in concepts such as
the abyss of Jacob Boeme, the Void or Nirvana of
Buddhism or the Absolute of a number of
Vol. 4 No. 3
philosophical/mystical traditions. There is no ques-
tion that whether the experience is interpreted per-
sonally as God or impersonally as the Absolute, it
nevertheless possesses a quality of transcendent
wholeness without any temporal or spatial division
whatsoever. We have postulated that these rare states
of Absolute Unitary Being are associated with the
total blocking of input into the superior parietal lobe
(d'Aquili and Newberg 1993).
Due to connections between the superior parietal
lobe and the limbic system, the structures that sub-
serve emotional responses, it may be that the more
blocking of input into the right superior parietal lobe,
the stronger will be the associated emotional dis-
charge in the limbic system. The involvement of the
limbic system in such experiences is supported by
studies in which electrical stimulation of two limbic
structures, the amygdala and hippocampus, has re-
sulted in various sensory experiences, visions, and
emotional discharges similar to some of those that
occur during spiritual experiences (Penfield and Perot
1963; Valenstein 1973). Limbic stimulation during
spiritual experiences may be modulated by activity in
the superior parietal lobes as well as the frontal lobes
since these structures are all intimately intercon-
nected Joseph 1996). During practices such as medi-
tation, stimulation of the limbic system may result
from activity in the frontal cortex which is known to
modulate emotional responses through its connec-
tions with the amygdala and hippocampus. Increased
frontal lobe activity has been shown to occur during
meditation and likely occurs during other types of
spiritual practices (Lazar et al. 2000; Newberg et al.
2001; Herzog et al. 1990-1991). Thus, in any percep-
tion, such as a piece of music, a painting, a sculpture,
or a sunset, there is a sense of meaning and whole-
ness which transcends the constituent parts.
In aesthetic experiences such as those just de-
scribed, this transcendence is mild to moderate. The
overarching sense of unity between two persons in
romantic love might represent the next stage in this
continuum. Feelings of numinosity or religious awe
occur when there is a very marked sense of meaning
and wholeness extending well beyond the parts per-
ceived, or well beyond the image generated, but in a
'wholly other' context. It is often considered (al-
though not necessarily correctly) to be the dominant
Western mystical experience. It is experienced when
an archetypal symbol is perceived, or when certain
archetypal elements are externally constellated in a
myth. As one moves from numinosity along the con-
tinuum, one can reach the state of religious exalta-
55
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
tion characterized by a sense of meaning and whole-
ness extending to all discrete being whether subjective
or objective (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999). The essen-
tial unity and purposefulness of the universe is per-
ceived as a primary datum despite the perception and
knowledge of evil in the world. During this state,
there is nothing whatsoever that escapes the mantle of
wholeness and purposefulness. But this state does not
obliterate discrete being, and it certainly exists within
a temporal context. This roughly corresponds to
Stace's extrovertive mystical experience.
From a neurohemeneutical perspective, how can
we begin to interpret all of these different experiences
and their meaning? It would be helpful to determine
if there are particular neuropsychological constructs
that help towards understanding these experiences.
Furthermore, it will be helpful to utilize this informa-
tion in a way that contributes something to episte-
mology. Let us explore in more detail how we might
be able to construct a neurohermeneutical approach
towards spiritual experiences.
The Beginnings of
a Neurohermeneutic
In the above section, we have begun to see how brain
functions might be related to specific components of
spiritual experiences such as unity or emotions. This
raises the larger consideration that the brain affects
all of our perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. To
some degree, the brain may augment or create our
experiences, thoughts, and feelings, and to some de-
gree, the brain may receive them. Furthermore,
whether causing or experiencing our world, the brain
likely restricts or constrains the ways in which we ex-
perience the world. Thus, when applied to philoso-
phy and epistemology, such an analysis can lead to a
new hermeneutical approach in which we consider
the influence of the brain on a variety of ideological
positions. It would seem appropriate to consider this
approach as a neurohermeneutic - how the brain
influences human experiences and ideas about reality
(Newberg 2010). It should be clear though, that what
we are exploring through this neurohermeneutical
analysis is how a given individual experiences some
aspect of neuropsychological function, which ulti-
mately is associated with a specific idea or concept
about the universe. In essence then, we are construct-
ing a neurohermeneutic regarding how the brain is
related to our experiences and how these experiences
affect, alter, and constrain the human ability to think
specific theological and philosophical thoughts. We
Vol. 4 No. 3
are also developing, in some regard, a new philo-
sophical system which might be called 'experiential-
ist' such that all thinking, emotions, and ideas, are
tied to human experience. This is akin to the Kantian
position that the external world is only known to us
through our perceptions and ideas. However, neu-
rotheology has the potential to take this notion fur-
ther since 'experience' in this context does not refer
only to sensory experience, but the experience of our
own internal cognitive, emotional, and perhaps, spiri-
tual processes. Finally, a neurohermeneutic also offers
the potential for obtaining empirical data to support
or refute specific ideas.
In addition to empirical data that might be ob-
tained through some scientific method, neuroherme-
neutics argues for obtaining the equally important
data from subjective experience. This might not be
too dissimilar from Husserl's phenomenology, but
certain distinctions should be identified as we proceed
through this neurohermeneutical analysis. The pur-
pose of our experientialist analysis is to determine
exactly what parts of the human being allow us to
have experiences so that we may understand the sub-
jective nature of the experiences as ascertained
through a phenomenological analysis. In this way,
neurohermeneutics might actually be a blending of
Kantian philosophy with phenomenology. As we will
see, such an analysis may have profound implications
for theological and philosophical thought, hermeneu-
tics itself, and phenomenology. This will be particu-
larly the case in the analysis of epistemological issues
pertaining to the experience of reality and the identi-
fication of the characteristics by which we define real-
ity '
A neurohermeneutical approach argues that we
should strive to understand all of reality from the
cognitive, emotional, and perceptual processes associ-
ated with the brain. But, if neurohermeneutics is to
be a true hybrid approach, there should be a compa-
rable contribution of science and various aspects of
human experience, including spiritual experiences.
Thus, a neurohermeneutic must recognize that this
approach may prove useful for understanding the
basis of the scientific disciplines as well as religious
ones. Can we not ask why science has developed in
the current manner? How much of science is based
upon what makes sense to our brain? How much of
science is based upon the ways in which the brain has
shaped the ways in which we conceive of the reality
of the world? This suggests a need to more clearly
determine how the brain perceives reality utilizing
this neurohermeneutical approach.
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Spiritual Experiences
as Primary Epistemic States
When evaluating how we come to know the external
world, we must begin with how we come to know
anything at all. A neurohermeneutical approach
would acknowledge that the only way in which hu-
man beings come to know what is real is through the
various senses and the brain's processing of that sen-
sory input. The brain takes all of the sensory input,
utilizes its cognitive and emotional resources, and
puts together a 'rendition' of the world with which an
individual can interact. Outward actions or behaviors
then have consequences in the world that are per-
ceived in addition to whatever was already out there
in the external world. The external world is what is
actually objectively real regardless of human percep-
tions and cognitions. It would seem almost impossible
to completely get at what is ultimately, objectively real
because any information or sense that is received
about this objective reality necessarily must come
through the human brain.
But we must now ask another question — Why
does something feel real to us at all? In other words,
when we perceive a table, listen to someone talk to us,
or even have a spiritual experience, we have the
strong tendency to perceive these things as real. Is the
sense that something is real based upon perceptions
only, consistency of time, emotions, logic? Regardless,
neurohermeneutics would also remind us that how-
ever the brain comes to perceive something as real
has no clear bearing on what is actually, absolutely
real, but rather relates to our experience of whatever
is real. This issue will be addressed more at the end of
this article. For now, though, let us explore how the
brain does experience reality and more specifically,
how it informs us what it thinks is real. At this point
then, we are forced to explore only the sense of real-
ity that is created for us by the brain. We have noth-
ing more to go on, at least yet.
In fact, we may find ourselves contemplating the
notion that what we use to assess if something is real
ultimately comes down to our profound sense that it
is real. This is certainly not a very satisfying conclu-
sion. But from a neurohermeneutical perspective, we
may find no other clear way to assess how real some-
thing is. It seems that any criteria we might use is ul-
timately reducible to our sense that it is real. Typi-
cally, we cite criteria such as vividness, persistence,
cross reference, logicalness, or any other criteria, they
all seem to collapse into the sense of realness. After
Vol. 4 No. 3
all, each criteria represents some aspect of reality that
we also must sense. Thus, vividness refers to a clarity
of perception. But a perception is also sensed as be-
ing real. If we perceive the persistence of an object
over time, that too is a qualia that requires our sense
that the persistence itself is real. And if we ask for
cross referencing with other individuals, their re-
sponses are sensed as being real. How do we know
which of these senses of reality are actually real? We
have no way of knowing other than by trying to as-
sess the strength of the sense that something is real.
Again, though, this is not necessarily comforting epis-
temologically since it does not tell us what external
reality actually is like. We are trapped within our
brain peering out into the world and reconstructing it
the best we can. We inherently experience a 'second-
hand' rendition of the world.
A substantial additional concern regarding our
reliance on the sense of realness we experience is that
this approach might result in relativism or solipsism.
After all, if everything in reality is at best experienced
as a perception by the brain, then there might be no
absolute. Or at least, there is no absolute that our
brain can determine. In addition, it must always be
remembered that the perceptions of reality and real-
ity itself are not necessarily commensurate. Relativ-
ism might apply to human perceptions, but it does
not necessarily apply to actual reality Similarly, solip-
sism would suggest that the self is the only reality and
the self is the only thing that can be known. While
these notions might be true on one hand, they too are
perceptions of reality and thus, even a solipsistic
stance must be regarded as a perception of the brain
in much the same way as any other experience of
reality.
Can there be some way around this paradoxical
problem in which there is a fundamental disconnect
between our perceptions of reality and actual reality?
Although such a problem might be unresolvable,
neurohermeneutics would suggest that we should be-
gin by exploring our perceptions of reality since we
have no choice but to begin here. In the reality that
we perceive on a daily basis, what might be called
'everyday' or 'baseline' reality, there is a very strong
sense that what is perceived is, in fact, real. One
might call this sense of reality a Primary Epistemic
State of the brain (Newberg 2010). It should be men-
tioned that such a state is to some extent a brain state
and to some extent a phenomenological state. It is the
brain that enables that experiential state that subse-
quently enables an individual to perceive that experi-
ence as real. The primary epistemic state of baseline
57
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
reality, however, is only one way in which the brain
can perceive reality. Thus, there may be a number of
epistemic states. Further, these states might be con-
sidered 'primary' because they are not derived from
sense perception per se, but rather define the form
and understanding of that perception. Theoretically,
they also would not be reducible into each other.
Why are primary epistemic states important to
spiritual experiences and the development of neuro-
hermeneutics? One of the most important points is
that understanding such states will be crucial for
helping develop a nomenclature for various religious
and spiritual states, particularly mystical ones. It is in
these spiritual or mystical states that individuals often
recount the realness of the experience, and the divine
or absolute nature of the experience. For many, such
an experience lies at the heart of their religious or
spiritual expression. Furthermore, an epistemological
analysis of different epistemic states might be crucial
for determining which view — scientific, religious, or
otherwise - has the best perspective on the true na-
ture of reality even if distinguishing our perception of
reality from reality itself is a difficult task.
What makes any primary epistemic state define
reality for a particular person is the individual's sense,
when they are in one of these states, that what they
are experiencing is fundamentally or ultimately real.
This is a crucial aspect since it would seem essential
that when one is in a primary epistemic state, it is
perceived as if that state represents what is actually
real. Once the person leaves a state and settles into a
second one, they typically perceive the original state
to no longer represent actual reality. In this case, any
other perception of reality is considered to be an illu-
sion or deception. Other than baseline reality, the
other epistemic state that most people are familiar
with is dreams. During a dream, everything that is
experienced is usually treated as real even when
things do not follow logical ordering or do not appear
vivid. The point here is that a dream is perceived to
be real during the dream, and then recognized as
'just a dream' upon awakening. Once back in base-
line reality, there is the perception that the dream
state, or any other for that matter, does not represent
actual reality.
In order to determine what is really real and the
characteristics of these primary epistemic states, neu-
rohermeneutics can attempt to derive the nature of
these states based upon both human experience and
the functioning of the brain. A neurohermeneutical
approach should typically include several important
elements with regard to primary epistemic states.
Vol. 4 No. 3
These elements are determined primarily by how
human beings sense and make sense of reality. This
requires sensory elements, cognitive elements, and
emotional elements. In fact, it might be helpful to
break down the primary epistemic state into three
parameters, each of which relate not only to the ex-
perience but to brain functions (Newberg 2011): (1)
perceptions of objects or beings which can be mani-
fested as either multiple discrete things (i.e. more than
one), or as a holistic union of all things (a unitary re-
ality in which everything is one), (2) relationships be-
tween objects or things that are either regular or ir-
regular, and (3) emotional responses to the objects or
things that are either positive, negative, or neutral.
Each of these parameters is well known to our
own perceptions of the world. Human beings appear
to only perceive the world as consisting of either mul-
tiple discrete objects or as a unity. We are born with
the neurological capability to observe, name, and
manipulate multiple objects as discrete things. The
abstract and reductionist processes of the brain help
in that regard. Language too is essential in labeling
objects and categorizing them. Thus, we distinguish
between a spruce tree, a mountain, and a dog. We
have extensive nomenclature for naming animals and
plants, atoms and molecules, and ethical and religious
frameworks. The areas of the brain involved in cate-
gorization and naming have been studied in the field
of cognitive neuroscience and lend support to the
importance of these structures and their associated
functions in establishing our perceptions of reality.
If there is the perception that there are absolutely
no discrete objects, the person experiences the state of
absolute unity which we considered above. There
may be a variety of states with an increasing sense of
unification of things, but philosophically speaking, it
would seem that there could only be one state in
which there is a complete and absolute unity of all
things. This experience includes the sense that the
individual is part of the unity such that there is no
self and no other. Otherwise, there would be discrete
objects, namely the self and the other. Evidence from
brain imaging supports the notion that parts of the
brain that typically integrate sensory information into
a sense of self and an orientation of that self with
respect to the world might be affected during spiritual
practices that lead to unitary states (Newberg et al.
2001). However, it may be impossible to scientifically
measure the changes associated with absolute unitary
states since there is no clear way to know when some-
one else is actually in such a state. It is impossible for
an individual to report that they are having an expe-
58
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
rience of absolute unity, it is likely that it will never be
known what pattern of brain activity is associated
with this experience.
In our perceptions of the world, there are also
important causal and logical relationships between
the objects we perceive in the world. When such rela-
tionships appear to make sense to us, we refer to
them as regular. The causal processes of the brain
play a critical role in the ability to evaluate relation-
ships between objects and triggers a response in us
when unexpected things occur. When causality seems
disrupted, we experience an emotional response that
alerts us to the disruption. When relationships are
irregular, we note that they do not appear to follow
established pathways based upon our prior experi-
ences of reality. Research on infants to adults shows
that we respond differently, and activate different
parts of the brain, when confronted with irregular
relationships whether they are grammatical, musical,
logical, or any other type of relationship.
Emotional responses (or affect) in humans are far
ranging in their composition. However, they appear
to eventually be classified into three broad categories
- positive, negative, and neutral. Positive emotions
include happiness, joy, elation, love, and contentment.
Negative emotions include fear, sadness, depression,
anxiety, anger, and melancholy. The absence of ei-
ther positive or negative emotions would be catego-
rized as neutral. Many cognitive neuroscience studies
have evaluated how the brain processes positive and
negative emotions with the realization that emotions
can be compared to a neutral state. The emotional
responses in primary epistemic states, however, do
not refer to the usual feelings of happiness and sad-
ness that most people refer to, but to the overall emo-
tional approach of the person to their reality. In other
words, the whole world is viewed as positive or nega-
tive rather than feeling positive at some points and
negative at others.
It is also important to mention that each of these
parameters is most likely set along a continuum.
Thus, one may have an experience of reality that is
based primarily on having multiple discrete objects,
but may also have some unitary attributes. Similarly,
there may be some regular and some irregular rela-
tionships between objects. However, this notation al-
lows for an overall perspective from which more spe-
cific elements of primary epistemic states can be
elaborated. Based upon these parameters there ap-
pear to be nine possible primary epistemic states that
are internally consistent, and should have neurologi-
cal and phenomenological correlates. It should also
Vol. 4 No. 3
be noted that an individual might enter into many
different states during their lifetime. They may re-
main in one state briefly, for many years, or for their
entire life. But they might also shift from one primary
epistemic state to another, and sometimes quite fre-
quently.
As an example, in addition to the primary epis-
temic state of everyday reality, there are other states
such as dream states, psychotic states, and drug in-
duced states that contain multiple discrete objects
that we appear to respond to. And each of these
states may include positive, negative, or neutral emo-
tions. Importantly, when an individual is in one of
these states, they act as if that state is the true reality
at the moment. For example, when a person is
dreaming, their reactions to the events in the dream
do not take into account everyday reality. The person
responds as if the dream state represents the real real-
ity. It is only upon awakening from the dream that we
relegate it to an inferior perception of reality and
now treat everyday reality as the real reality. This is
true of each of these epistemic states in which there
are discrete objects. This is also true for states in
which there is a progressive sense of the unity of all
things. This can include profound spiritual or mysti-
cal experiences in which the whole world is perceived
to be one with God, Christ, or some other Divine
entity. However, there is still one or more objects in
that perception of reality (i.e. the universe and the
Divine entity).
Absolute unitary states form a fundamentally
different type of primary epistemic state. In unitary
reality, there is no perception of discrete, independent
objects that can be related to each other so there
cannot be any relationships (regular or irregular). As
mentioned, there may be many other states, espe-
cially spiritual ones, that have a significant degree of
unitary experience even though the totality of every-
thing is not considered to be completely unified. Uni-
tary states other than absolute unity most likely repre-
sent a number of spiritual or mystical states, but
probably lie along the continuum of primary epis-
temic states between those that involve the perception
of multiple discrete objects and those in which there
is the perception of a unity without discrete objects.
The absolute unitary state referred to in this discus-
sion represents a state described in many religious
and philosophical perspectives. Thus, Nirvana, Abso-
lute Reality, the Oneness of God, Absolute Unitary
Being, and a number of other terms all refer to this
complete and total unitary experience of the universe
(d'Aquili and Newberg 1999). The exact physiology
59
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
of such a state is also an interesting issue since a re-
searcher can never know when such an experience is
being perceived. However, research has suggested
some possible correlates. Most likely, areas that sub-
serve the sense of self and the sense of space and
time are affected. It may be that activity inherently
within these areas is substantially decreased, or per-
haps neuronal activity going into or coming out of
those areas is blocked (i.e. these areas are cut off from
the rest of the brain's functions).
It might be argued that the unitary reality state is
associated with three possible emotional states which
contain either positive, negative, or neutral affect,
similarly to the states in which there is the experience
of discrete objects. If unitary reality is associated with
positive affect it is perceived as an undifferentiated
oneness which is totally joyful and overwhelmingly
good. The experience of unitary reality with neutral
affect is very similar to the experience of unitary real-
ity with positive affect such that the universe is di-
rectly understood as being an undifferentiated one-
ness. However, with neutral affect the oneness is un-
derstood on a very impersonal level. Unitary reality is
not viewed as good or bad or anything - it just is.
Thus, the state of unitary reality with neutral affect
would more likely be referred to as the void or infinite
nothingness in religious literature. This is particularly
the case in Buddhist philosophy. It is interesting to
note that, to date, there are no clear references to an
experience of a unitary reality when perceived with a
negative affect. It may be that such a state simply is
not possible. Perhaps it cannot come about because
the experience of all things as an undifferentiated
oneness is so powerfully positive and integrative, that
it cannot be perceived in negative terms. It may be
argued that such an experience of unitary reality with
negative affect is even incompatible with life, the
brain, or the mind.
An important point about the unitary epistemic
states is that it could be further argued that the uni-
tary reality state should actually include all three pos-
sible emotional states together, since even affect
should be experienced as a unity. In other words, this
state cannot even be considered to have different af-
fective components. This might also be the case since
the perceiving self is not separate from the rest of the
universe in the unitary epistemic state, and thus, any
emotion can theoretically only be felt after the person
is no longer in the epistemic state. They can only re-
flect on the emotional response they have as the result
of being in the unitary epistemic state since there is
no self to have the emotion during that state. It is not
Vol. 4 No. 3
clear what the experience of positive, negative, and
neutral emotions all combined into one would actu-
ally feel like. Arguably, it might be experienced as
neutral since the positive and negative would cancel
out. But since the positive and negative would theo-
retically be included in the neutral, it still might be a
different experience from a state which is simply neu-
tral. It is also not clear how such a state might corre-
late with neurological functions although it may be
possible for structures that are associated with positive
affect and those associated with negative affect to be
activated at the same time. Descriptions of such uni-
tary states do utilize a wide variety of emotions,
sometimes together, ranging from fear and awe to joy
and utter contentment. However, in the end, it might
be argued that unitary reality should not be differen-
tiated, even by affect.
The most important aspect of the primary epis-
temic state of unitary reality is that unlike other pri-
mary states, when an individual 'comes out of it,'
evidence suggests that the person does not perceive it
or the memory of it as an illusion, hallucination, or
delusion (Newberg and Waldman 2009). Once a per-
son has been in the state of unitary reality, they un-
derstand it to exist even though the person may not
be in those states at some later time. Thus, the state of
unitary reality appears to violate the rule of primary
epistemic states, that they are real when in them and
are perceived as not real when in another primary
epistemic state. When reality is experienced as uni-
tary, the person believes this state to be fundamentally
real regardless of which other state they are in. In
fact, the sense of reality is so strong during the expe-
rience of unitary reality, that when a person comes
out of this experience and enters into another pri-
mary epistemic state, the new state is often perceived
as a mere reflection or distortion of the unitary real-
ity. Thus, unitary reality is perceived as real beyond
all other primary states even when a person is in
those other states. This property is unique to the ex-
perience of unitary reality since no other primary
epistemic state is perceived of as ultimate reality once
one has moved from it to another primary state.
Conclusions:
Implications for Consciousness
This chapter explored the nature of spiritual experi-
ences from a neurohermeneutical and neurotheologi-
cal perspective. The result is a multidisciplinary ap-
proach that combines phenomenology, neuroscience,
spirituality, anthropology, and theology. The result is
60
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
an analysis of human experience that provides in-
formation on how we perceive reality itself and make
meaning about that reality through the processes of
the brain. What is also intriguing about such an
analysis is the place the consciousness has in all of
this. On one hand, it might be argued that con-
sciousness is an essential part of all experiences of
reality and hence all of the primary epistemic states.
This typically refers to a type of 'everyday' con-
sciousness that human beings have. We all feel that
we are conscious, have subjective awareness about the
environment around us, and have an awareness of
our internal state that responds to the external envi-
ronment. This type of consciousness is often consid-
ered from a more materialistic perspective in that it
derives in large part from the functioning of the hu-
man brain. As the brain processes information about
the world, it provides a sense of awareness. Of course
there are some fundamental philosophical and scien-
tific problems with this notion of consciousness since
it is not clear how a set of non-conscious biological
processes can produce consciousness, let alone subjec-
tive awareness if we define these two concepts sepa-
rately.
This is what scholars studying consciousness
(Chalmers 1995) have come to call the 'hard prob-
lem' — How does the brain function in such a way as
to produce consciousness? Of course, part of the is-
sue is that there is a presumed causal arrow from the
brain to consciousness. This is consistent with the
current paradigm of Western thought and science.
However, there may be a different perspective to take.
It may be that consciousness does not derive from
biology, but rather, the other way around. Perhaps
consciousness is the primary 'stuff' of the universe
from which material reality is derived. This is cer-
tainly consistent with Eastern traditions which hold
consciousness to exist beyond simply the biology of
the brain. What is also interesting in this regard is
that the primary epistemic state of absolute unitary
being is frequently experienced as a kind of universal
consciousness. Such experiences contribute to the
notion of a universal consciousness which is not pro-
duced via the biology of the brain. The notion of
how different philosophical concepts arise and are
attributed to an explanation of reality may be directly
related to the primary epistemic state in which the
notion arises. For example, an individual who resides
in the everyday reality epistemic state is more likely to
find a materialistic cause of things. However, and
individual who has experienced absolute unity may
Vol. 4 No. 3
be more likely to comprehend a spiritual or con-
sciousness basis for reality.
Neurohermeneutics and neurotheology are perspec-
tives that would argue for a careful analysis of epis-
temological claims and claims about the true nature
of reality. Further, such a perspective would argue
that an individual's primary epistemic state, including
the brain states involved, are a crucial piece of in-
formation that leads to the nature of any person's
beliefs about reality. But neurohermeneutics and neu-
rotheology also remind us that every belief, concept,
or experience we hold about the world is processed in
some way through the human brain. Therefore, we
can never know if our ideas about reality, or our ex-
perience of a primary epistemic state is more or less
real than any other. This fundamental problem lies at
the heart of epistemology spirituality, religion, and
science. Neurohermeneutics and neurotheology, rec-
ognize this problem and try to offer a multidisciplin-
ary approach that might get us closer to resolving this
problem than any singular approach. But the ulti-
mate answers to these questions for now remain elu-
sive.
References
Chalmers DJ (1995). 'Facing up to the problem of
consciousness.' Journal of Consciousness Studies.
2:200-219.
d'Aquili EG (1978). 'The neurobiological bases of
myth and concepts of deity.' ZyS on -
13(4):257-275.
d'Aquili EG (1982). 'Senses of reality in science and
religion.' Zygon. 17:361-384.
d'Aquili EG (1986). 'Myth, ritual and the archetypal
hypothesis: Does the dance generate the word?'
Zygon. 2 1(2): 141-160.
d'Aquili EG and Newberg AB (1999). The Mystical
Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience.
Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
dAquili EG (1985). 'Human ceremonial ritual and
the modulation of aggression.' Zjgon.
20(l):21-30.
dAquili EG and Newberg AB (1993). 'Religious and
mystical states: a neuropsychological substrate.'
Zygon. 28: 177-200.
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
d'Aquili EG and Newberg AB (1998). 'The neuropsy-
chological basis of religion: Or why God won't
go away' fygon. 33(2): 187-201.
Herzog H, Lele VR, Kuwert T, et al. (1990-1991).
'Changed pattern of regional glucose metabo-
lism during yoga meditative relaxation.' Neuropsy-
chobiology. 23: 182-187.
Joseph R (1996). Neuropsychology, Neuropsychiatry and
Behavioral Neurology. Baltimore: Williams & Wilk-
ins.
Lazar SW, Bush G, Gollub RL, et al. (2000). 'Func-
tional brain mapping of the relaxation response
and meditation.' Neuroreport. 11: 1581-1585.
Newberg A, Alavi A, Baime M, Mozley PD and
d'Aquili E (2001). 'The measurement of regional
cerebral blood flow during the complex cogni-
tive task of meditation: A preliminary SPECT
study' Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. 106: 113-
122.
Biography
Andrew Newberg, M.D. Is
Director of Research at the
Myrna Brind Center for Inte-
grative Medicine at Thomas
Jefferson University Hospital
and Medical College, an
Adjunct Professor of Relig-
ious Studies and an Associ-
ate Professor of Radiology
at the University of Pennsyl-
vania School of Medicine.
He has been a prominent
researcher in the field of
nuclear medical brain imag-
ing. In particular, his research has focused on the devel-
opment of neurotransmitter tracers for the evaluation of
religiosity as well as neurological and psychiatric disorders
including clinical depression, head injury, Alzheimer's dis-
ease, and Parkinson's disease. Because of his work in the
intersection between religion and the brain, he has become
an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Relig-
ious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. From 2005
to 201 0 he was also the Director of the Center for Spiritual-
ity and the Mind.
New Publication of Interest:
Kuma Art & Shamanism - Paolo Fortis
Newberg AB (2010). Principles of Neurotheology . Surrey
UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd.
Newberg AB and Waldman MR (2009). How God
Changes Tour Brain. New York: Ballantine.
Penfield W and Perot P (1963). 'The brain's record of
auditory and visual experience.' Brain. 86: 595-
695.
Smart N (1969). The Religious Experience of Mankind.
London: Macmillan.
Smart N (1978). 'Understanding Religious Experi-
ence.' In: Katz S (ed), Mysticism and Philosophical
Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.
Stace WT (1961). Mysticism and Philosophy. London:
Macmillan.
Valenstein ES (1973). Brain control: A critical examination
of brain stimulation and psychosurgery. New York:
John Wiley & Sons.
UNA
Art and Shamanist
http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/books/forkun
Vol. 4 No. 3
62
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Announcing a New Masters Programme in Canterbury, UK
MA in Myth, Cosmology and the Sacred
To begin January 2014, 1 year full-time or
2 years part-time
Tutors: Wilma Fraser (director), Geoffrey
Cornelius, Angela Voss, Marguerite
Rigoglioso (guest lecturer).
This interdisciplinary Masters programme
draws on studies in psychology, anthro-
pology, theology, esoteric philosophy, a
range of wisdom traditions and the arts. It
offers a discerning investigation into
seemingly non-rational modes of know-
ing, exploring the cosmological sense of
the sacred, the widespread practices of
symbol-interpretation and divination, and
the cultural role of the creative imagina-
tion. The programme will appeal to all
those seeking to enrich their lives
through the study of the history, philoso-
phy and rituals of Western sacred and
esoteric traditions, and will be of particu-
lar interest to teachers, practitioners and
therapists in the fields of contemporary
spirituality and well-being who would like to engage more deeply with the foundations of their
work. Students will be required to submit four essays, a creative portfolio and review, extracts
from an ongoing reflective Learning Journal and a dissertation. The MA is taught at alternate
weekends Jan-June, with additional Wednesday mornings for full time students. The second
half of the year consists of supervised research with a presentation weekend in September.
Students will be required to submit four essays, a creative portfolio and review, extracts from
an ongoing reflective Learning Journal and a dissertation.
For the student handbook and all admin information (including fees) contact Michelle Childs:
post.compulsory.education@canterbury.ac.uk, 01227 863458.
For information regarding course content, contact Angela Voss:
angela.voss@canterbury.ac.uk
http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/courses/prospectus/postgraduate/courses/myth-cosmology-sacred.asp
Canterbury
Department of Post Compulsory Education and Training Christ Church
i University
<2>i
Vol. 4 No. 3
63
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Ultra-Terrestrials and the UFO Phenomenon:
A Response to Steven Mizrach
Jason Colavito
In the previous issue of this journal (Vol. 4, No. 2),
Steven Mizrach discussed "The Para-Anthropology
of UFO Abductions: The Case for UTH," or the
"ultra-terrestrial hypothesis." This is an idea put for-
ward by Jacques Vallee, the famed ufologist, that the
phenomena associated with UFOs and alien abduc-
tion could be explained by the actions of intelligent
beings from another dimension manipulating human
consciousness. In this, Vallee was preceded by science
fiction writers like H. P Lovecraft who used the same
conceit in stories like "The Dreams in the Witch
House" (1932) and "The Dunwich Horror" (1928),
and earlier by the Victorian-era Spiritualists and
Theosophists who argued that beings from other di-
mensions played a direct role in human affairs. For
the Spiritualists, these were four-dimensional beings
whose actions had consequences in three dimensions,
while the Theosophists posited myriad parallel di-
mensions centred on other solar system bodies and
populated by beings that moved into and out of this
dimension to induce evolutionary change on earth.
Mizrach evaluated three competing explanations
for the UFO phenomenon: (a) the traditional view
that UFOs are nuts-and-bolts spaceships (the extra-
terrestrial hypothesis, or ETH), the more recent view
that UFOs can be explained as modern folklore (the
psychocultural hypothesis, or PCH), and the UTH.
Mizrach, however, said that he was unsatisfied with
the folklore explanation because for him it failed to
explain the power of the UFO phenomenon and its
effect on the lives of those who encounter alien be-
ings.
Thus, Mizrach concludes that the UTH is the
best remaining explanation for the UFO phenome-
non, following Sherlock Holmes' fictional dictum that
eliminating the impossible leaves by default the truth:
The one thing I am sure of, however, is that
there is an intelligence behind the phenome-
non [. . .] The ETH fails, but I also find the
'pure' form of the PCH insufficient, so I turn
Vol. 4 No. 3
to Vallee's UTH (sometimes also known as the
EDI, or extra-dimensional intelligence theory),
as the best model, for now.
Mizrach also asserts that modern science has dis-
counted the possibility of the UFO phenomenon
providing important or even interesting scientific
data, and he claims that the United States govern-
ment exerted influence in discounting the value of
UFO research.
In this article, I would like to challenge both of
these views, beginning with Mizrach's argument that
science sees no value in UFO research.
The Condon Report
Mizrach's argument in support of the UTH as the
best model for the UFO phenomenon is predicated
upon the supposition that the University of Colorado
UFO Project's Air Force-funded 1969 Scientific
Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, better known
as the Condon Report, acted as a mission statement for
scientists, and that it discounted the value of UFO
research. The Report wrote that those scientists who
studied UFOs concluded "that UFO phenomena do
not offer a fruitful field in which to look for major
scientific discoveries" (1969:2).
This is Mizrach's warrant for suggesting that
three "alternatives" to mainstream science (the ETH,
PCH, and UTH) are therefore plausible avenues for
research given the silence from science, which has
declared UFOs incompatible with physics:
I mean, even if the essential model is correct,
science could still learn something from study-
ing UFO reports. Perhaps we could learn more
about human misperception of stars and plan-
ets, the inability for people to correctly esti-
mate the size or distance of aerial objects, or
even the mechanisms behind the confabulation
of false stories. Yet, that is the mantra of the
64
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
1969 report, that nothing of scientific value
can be gained from studying UFO reports, and
therefore the Air Force and other branches of
government have no need to investigate them.
However, Mizrach has misrepresented the Condon
Report, for, while the report opens with the conclusion
that UFOs have nothing to teach about extraterres-
trial beings, just a few paragraphs later, the report
directly contradicts Mizrach's version of its contents:
As the reader of this report will readily judge,
we have focussed attention almost entirely on
the physical sciences. This was in part a matter
of determining priorities and in part because
we found rather less than some persons may
have expected in the way of psychiatric prob-
lems related to belief in the reality of UFOs as
craft from remote galactic or intergalactic civi-
lizations. We believe that the rigorous study of
the beliefs — unsupported by valid evi-
dence — held by individuals and even by some
groups might prove of scientific value to the
social and behavioral sciences. There is no im-
plication here that individual or group psycho-
pathology is a principal area of study. Reports
of UFOs offer interesting challenges to the
student of cognitive processes as they are af-
fected by individual and social variables. By
this connection, we conclude that a content-
analysis of press and television coverage of
UFO reports might yield data of value both to
the social scientist and the communications
specialist. The lack of such a study in the pre-
sent report is due to a judgment on our part
that other areas of investigation were of much
higher priority. We do not suggest, however,
that the UFO phenomenon is, by its nature,
more amenable to study in these disciplines
than in the physical sciences. On the contrary,
we conclude that the same specificity in pro-
posed research in these areas is as desirable as
it is in the physical sciences.
Given that the report which Mizrach says determined
the scientific view of UFOs asserts the value of social
and behavior sciences for understanding the UFO
phenomenon, it is therefore not permissible to classify
the PCH as an "alternative" viewpoint tacitly coequal
with the ETH and UTC. Rather, the PCH should be
seen as the default (social) scientific explanation for
the UFO phenomenon insofar as such a phenome-
Vol. 4 No. 3
non exists (a point to which I will return). Thus, the
work of Thomas E. Bullard (1989) in locating alien
abduction claims in the context of traditional super-
natural abduction narratives, and the work of Susan
A. Clancy (2005) probing the psychological origins of
abduction narratives are not "alternatives" to consen-
sus science but rather are operating entirely within
the mainstream. If the "hard" sciences conclude that
UFOs are impossible under the laws of physics as
currently known, it does not follow that no scholar-
ship emerges to explain why such claims persist.
It is therefore not nearly as surprising as Mizrach
claims that U.S. government agencies continued to
record UFO sightings after the Condon Report. They
did not "ignore the findings of the report" but rather
followed its broader view. Or, more likely, they moni-
tored such reports for what they could tell the gov-
ernment about Soviet aircraft and public perception
of secret American craft. The American government,
after all, is documented to have planted a fake UFO
report in the Soviet press in connection with U.S. ef-
forts to monitor Soviet activity in a strategically valu-
able Norwegian island in the Arctic (U.S. Dept. of
State 1968; see also Colavito 2013). In other words,
UFOs held interest for the government, just not in
the context of extraterrestrial (or ultra-terrestrial) visi-
tors.
The Ultra-Terrestrial Hypothesis
Strictly speaking, scientific research into PCH cannot
preclude UTH. Even if it can be shown that alien
abduction reports emerge primarily in the context of
altered states of consciousness (ASC), typically during
the transition between waking and sleep, this cannot
categorically exclude the arrival of trans-dimensional
intelligences at precisely that moment, nor can it pre-
clude the idea that our dreams are excursions to the
otherworldly beings' homelands. However, by the
same token, science cannot categorically exclude
phlogiston, pink elephants, or the Greek gods, no
matter how vanishingly remote the possibility of their
existence.
The better question is: With what warrant do we
propose the existence of ultra-terrestrial beings? For
Mizrach, summarizing Vallee, and to a lesser extent
Carl Jung, the answer is that PCH explanations are
"unsatisfying" for two reasons: (a) alien encounters
are too powerful and emotionally moving to be ex-
plained as the product of the human mind, and (b)
UFO reports have physical correlates in the material
world that cannot be explained by appeals to mental
65
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
events. I would submit that both of these claims are
false, though for different reasons.
The question of the reality of mental events is a
qualitative judgment. Mizrach recognizes that abduc-
tion reports are nearly identical to shamanic encoun-
ters with the gods in ASC, yet he "struggled with this
as an explanation of sufficient power" to account for
abductees' changes in personality and ideology, as
well as the appearance of the aliens to multiple wit-
nesses. Multiple witnesses, however, he illustrates with
the Travis Walton case, which skeptics have debunked
quite clearly as a combination of financial despera-
tion on the part of a group of failing loggers (he and
his fellow witnesses would owe a significant financial
penalty unless an "act of God" intervened) and a
convenient viewing of NBC's TV-movie about the
Betty and Barney Hill abduction just two weeks ear-
lier. A second case Mizrach cites, the Allagash "ab-
duction" of four men, is similarly suspect due to the
use of dubious regression hypnosis to generate the
abduction report. Surely a hypothesis as radical as
UTH requires evidence with firmer foundations.
That leaves the question of the intensity of the
experience. Surely this is an exquisitely subjective
question, for there is no reliable way to judge whether
a mental phenomenon is sufficiently intense to objec-
tively warrant a change in behavior. Schizophrenics,
of course, experience intense auditory hallucinations
sufficient for them to justify changes in their behavior
in response to these self-generated stimuli; however,
very few even among fringe researchers consider this
evidence of schizophrenic brains tuning in to alien
wavelengths. In 2002, David Lewis-Williams pro-
posed that modern human consciousness emerged
during the Upper Paleolithic in connection with
ASC, that the neurology of the human brain gener-
ated stock images in responses to ASC, and that cul-
ture defines how the individual experiences those
stock images — as vortexes, tunnels, gods, monsters,
aliens, etc.
For Lewis-Williams, the intensity of these ASC
experiences is what drove the emergence of higher
order consciousness, and since each piece of the ASC
experience can be induced experimentally by stimula-
tion of the brain, the phenomenon as a whole is
therefore reducible to the neurological function of
the brain. Lewis-Williams and David Pearce (2005)
later expanded this argument to show how the same
processes are reflected in Neolithic culture, centered
on a belief in the ability of the individual to travel
through a vortex to meet with the ancestral spirits or
the gods. The authors then connected this to modern
Vol. 4 No. 3
cultures' experiences and experimental laboratory
results. Thus, from the earliest human cultures, all of
the elements of the classic alien abduction were in
place, and they could be demonstrated to draw from
neurological — that is material, earthbound — sources.
As I noted above, this cannot be strictly proved since
the trans-dimensional aliens might well use ASC as a
gateway from their dimension, as advocated by Gra-
ham Hancock (2007) in adapting Lewis-Williams
work, but like phlogiston to the flame, the trans-
dimensional beings become somewhat redundant for
explaining alien abductions in the wake of neurologi-
cal evidence.
Is There a Singular UFO Phenomenon?
A complicating factor that Lewis-Williams's work
creates for the UTH is the fact that shamanic ASC
and historical "abduction" experiences, cited by
Vallee and other UTH speculators, do not conform
to the full narrative of the modern UFO phenome-
non, as developed after the Betty and Barney Hill
abduction claim (Fuller 1 966) and J. Allen Hynek's
(1972) classification of three types of UFO encoun-
ters, culminating with contact. Prior to this, strange
lights in the sky were not generally found in conjunc-
tion with other staples of the narrative, such as ab-
duction, sexual experimentation, and cattle mutila-
tion, a fact even the credulous Vallee (2009) himself
seemed to concede in cataloguing the "best" evidence
for prehistoric UFOs and finding no unambiguous
evidence for a complete UFO narrative prior to the
modern era, only fragments that paralleled portions
of the modern narrative. This might mean that the
trans-dimensional beings first emerged into our di-
mension only in 1947, 1961, or some other date, but
this would not explain those partial parallels.
I have previously traced the Hill abduction to
alien encounter and medical experimentation motifs
derived from three consecutive episodes of The Outer
Limits (1964), airing over the three weeks prior to
Barney Hill's first hypnosis session, including the
slanted-eyed aliens and their distinctive clothing, the
invasive probing, the backwoods setting, and even an
interracial narrative paralleling the Hills' own ro-
mance (Colavito 2012). It is noteworthy that the Hills
originally only reported to Project Bluebook seeing a
flying saucer until they were placed in an altered state
of consciousness three years later and began recalling
abduction imagery exactly paralleling Outer Limits
episodes in both plot and aesthetics from the weeks
before hypnosis. This origin point for the classic ab-
66
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
duction narrative strongly favors the PCH over the
UTH if this order of events is correct. Given that
high profile abduction cases that followed, including
the Travis Walton incident, can be shown to repro-
duce ideas and imagery appearing originally with the
Hill case, this again favors PCH over UTH.
Since Mizrach cited Sherlock Holmes about ac-
ceptance of the improbable, it is only fair to mention
Occam's Razor in defense of the idea that the hy-
pothesis with fewer assumptions is more likely to be
correct; in this case, the proposal of an unseen and
unattested alternative dimension of reality, populated
by multiple beings of near-supernatural intelligence,
who are capable of interacting with this dimension in
fixed ways across time and space is vastly more com-
plicated than the alternatives. The only serious sup-
port for this claim is the contention that the UFO
phenomenon encompasses physical phenome-
na — such as UFOs that can be tracked on ra-
dar — that preclude a purely mental explanation. In-
deed, this is Mizrach's primary objection to PCH.
This leads to my final question: Is the UFO phe-
nomenon singular?
The modern UFO phenomenon is composed
(roughly) of four parts: UFO sightings, crop circles,
cattle mutilation, and alien abduction. Ufologists dis-
agree on whether crop circles and cattle mutilation
should be considered part of the phenomenon, and
alternative explanations exist even among believers.
Cattle mutilation, for example, was traditionally as-
cribed down to the Twentieth Century to the evil
power of the goatsucker (nightjar), a (real) bird whose
mythology was reapplied to the Chupacabra, whose
name (literally: "goat sucker") belies its origins (see
my chapter on the Chupacabra in Colavito 2013),
and provides an equally incredible explanation for
something science recognizes as natural decay. Simi-
larly, prior to the modern UFO myth, lights in the sky
were treated as a distinct class of "prodigy" from noc-
turnal visitation by strange visitors such as incubi and
succubae, whom Vallee and Bullard both see as
analogous to UFO denizens. These visitations, how-
ever, were not associated with spaceships or intense
light, just kinky sex. Additionally, the first reported
alien encounters — those from before the Hills like
George Adamski's — were wildly diverse, including
civilized diplomatic meetings with Nordic -looking
aliens from Venus, like those of Golden Age science
fiction, as filtered through Theosophy. It is only after
the 1960s that these threads come together in the
modern UFO myth.
Because we find the various elements of the UFO
myth in isolation throughout history, the logical con-
clusion is that the four facets of the myth were origi-
nally separate and brought together because of the
UFO myth and the UFO phenomenon is not the
cause of the four facets. In this an instructive parallel
can be found in the ancient Greek myth of giants
who (a) built the massive Mycenaean ruins, (b) left
behind their gigantic bones, and (c) performed magic
from their underground tombs and rose to communi-
cate with those who sacrificed to them. The myth
emerged from mistakes (about the origin of ruins and
about the giant bones, really those of extinct Pleisto-
cene mammals — see Mayor [2000]), and religious
ideology, but it seemed supported by facts which were
forever after linked to the myth. In the same way, the
modern UFO myth is leading researchers down the
path of proposing elaborate explanations for a phe-
nomenon that cannot yet be proved to require a sin-
gular explanation.
If treating sightings, abductions, mutilations, and
crop circles as distinct events yields productive expla-
nations for each (as skeptics contend), then the UFO
phenomenon as a whole may be considered as a
modern myth and the UTH can be discarded as re-
dundant, though as with phlogiston and unicorns, it
cannot be conclusively proven wrong, only unneces-
sary. This then frees the researcher to examine multi-
ple causes for various phenomena, from ASC for
most abduction cases to a wide range of events that
yield lights in the sky. By discarding the strictures of
forcing all of the factors of contemporary UFO my-
thology to conform to a single hypothesis, the truth
may in fact emerge more fully and brilliantly than
ufologists suspect.
References
Bullard, T. E. (1989). 'UFO abduction reports: The
supernatural kidnap narrative returns in techno-
logical guise.' journal of American Folklore,
102(404): 147-170.
Clancy, S. A. (2005). Abducted: How People Come to Be-
lieve They Were Kidnapped by Aliens. Cambridge:
Harvard.
Colavito, J. (2013). Faking History: Essays on Aliens, At-
lantis, Monsters, and More. Albany:
JasonColavito.com Books.
Vol. 4 No. 3
67
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Colavito, J. (2012). Alien abduction at the outer lim-
its.' [Online] JasonColavito.com.
http:/ /www.jasoncolavito.com/ alien-abduction-
at-the-outer-limits.html [Accessed June 6, 2013].
Condon, E. U. (1968). Scientific Study of Unidentified
Flying Objects. University of Colorado.
Fuller, J. G. (1966). The Interrupted Journey. New York:
Dial Press.
Hancock, G. (2007). Supernatural: Meetings with the An-
cient Teachers of Mankind. New York: Disinforma-
tion.
Hynek, J. A. (1972). The UFO Experience: A Scientific
Inquiry. Chicago: Regnery.
Lewis- Williams, D. (2002). The Mind in the Cave. Lon-
don: Thames & Hudson.
Lewis-Williams, D. and Pearce, D. (2005). Inside the
Neolithic Mind. London: Thames & Hudson.
Mayor, A. (2000). The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in
Greek and Roman Times. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press.
Mizrach, S. (2013). 'The para-anthropology of UFO
abductions: The case for the UTH.' Paranthropol-
ogj, 4(2): 4-18.
Outer Limits, The. (1964). ABC-TV [Television
Broadcasts]: 'The Invisibles,' February 3; The
Bellero Shield, February 10; The Children of
Spider County, February 17.
U.S. Department of State (1968). 'Flying Saucers Are
a Myth' [Online]. Airgram No. A-1221, March 22.
Available from: National Security Agency FOIA
Reading Room [Accessed June 6, 2013].
Vallee, J. and Aubeck, C. (2009). Wonders in the Sky.
New York: Penguin.
Biography
Jason Colavito is an author
and editor based in Albany,
NY, whose books include The
Cult of Alien Gods: H.P. Love-
craft and Extraterrestrial Pop
Culture (Prometheus Books,
2005); Knowing Fear (McFar-
land, 2008); and more. Co-
lavito is internationally recog-
nized by scholars, literary
theorists, and scientists for his
pioneering work exploring the
connections between science,
pseudoscience, and specula-
tive fiction. His investigations,
which have appeared on the History Channel and were
cited in publications like The Atlantic and The Huffington
Post, examine the way human beings create and employ
the supernatural to alter and understand our reality and our
world.
New Publication of Interest:
'Mystic Chemist: The Life of Albert
Hofmann and His Discovery of LSD'
More than just a biography, this book is a
social and cultural history of LSD from its
discovery in 1 938 to the present day.
Highly recommended.
MYSTIC
The Life of
Albert Hofmann
and His
Discovery of
LSD
Dieter Hagenbach and Lucius Werthmiiller
Foreword by Stanislav Grof
Vol. 4 No. 3
68
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Musings on Good, Evil and the Conquest of Mexico
An Interview With Graham Hancock
William Rowlandson
That s what demons do - multiply human misery.
In frosty February I visited Graham Hancock in his
house in Bath to interview him for Paranthropology. I
had met Graham and his wife Santha at the confer-
ence on psychedelics, Breaking Convention, in 201 1, and
towards the end of a long conversation over coffee
Graham mentioned that his new work - a series of
novels - would be about Cortes and Moctezuma and
the daimonic/ demonic forces urging them towards
their explosive encounter. Intrigued, I made contact
with Graham some months later to suggest an inter-
view and to seek a review copy of the novel.
War God is a gripping and frank depiction of the
very real horror that accompanied this period, and
the reader is not shielded from visions of this harsh
reality There is a confident balance between histori-
cal realism: conversations, sights, smells, sounds, gore
- and inspired imagination: Moctezuma's mushroom-
fuelled relationship with the hummingbird god
Huitzilopochtli, and Cortes' dream-dialogue with St
Peter. Importantly, Graham presents with candour
and a genuinely open enquiry the very plausible pos-
sibilities of this communication between humans and
deities. Making no categorical statements about the
ontological nature of these entities, i.e. whether em-
pirically distinct beings or complexes of the uncon-
scious, the novel demonstrates that the sheer scale of
slaughter and destruction was inseparable from the
religious fervour of all parties. Something drove these
historical figures beyond simple lust for power. This
mystery is explored in War God.
Of all the many questions that I was keen to pose,
it became clear that the depiction of violence and the
sense of relentless brutality were the matters that
most preoccupied me. Graham had told me that his
first work of fiction, Entangled, had been inspired by
some visions during ayahuasca sessions, and that he
had experienced similar visions of the historical pe-
riod of Cortes and the Aztecs. Neither Entangled nor
War God shirk from presenting horrific cruelty perpe-
trated by humans as well as by entities of the spirit
Vol. 4 No. 3
world who exert their malevolent influence over hu-
mankind. In this respect, acts of love and compas-
sion, in opposition to acts of hate and horror, are
woven into the fabric of reality as part of a cosmic
conflict between good and evil. There is thus a meta-
physical, perhaps theological, aspect to these novels,
and I was intrigued to seek correlatives between Gra-
ham's fiction and his other works concerning ancient
architecture, lost civilisations, occult gnostic thought,
shamanism, psychedelics, and political power. Over
the course of the interview, it became clear that what
to some readers may appear as a radical departure
from his investigative, non-fiction work was in essence
an integral component of a larger vision presented
throughout his works of this ancient confrontation of
forces. It is also noteworthy that whilst the interview
lasted over two hours and covered matters as diverse
as ayahuasca-inspired artwork, the Jesuits, Aztec sac-
rifices, the War on Terror, drone strikes, cannabis and
megaliths, Graham chose to post on YouTube a 20-
minute segment of the interview in which he dis-
cusses precisely this matter of dualism, which he enti-
tled 'Graham Hancock on Good and Evil.' This topic
was clearly at the heart of the interview.
To begin the interview, I asked what role ayahua-
sca had played in providing the visions for the novels.
A great deal, was his response, and in particular, he
explained that the narrative of Entangled appeared
almost complete in a vision with a core sense that he
had been mistaken about the Neanderthals, and that,
importantly, he felt emboldened to present them in
the true nature that he had sensed in the vision:
Graham: / can't paint. In my case I have a gift of writing.
Ayahuasca did directly influence me, partly because I asked it
to. I published Entangled in 2007. I went to Brazil with the
intention of seeking a novel — it's useful to have some intention
— let the vine show me what it wants to show me — or — I said
that I would like to be given a vision. I felt tired of non-fiction
—footnotes, etc. — rigorous defence of arguments against attack
- I wanted freedom - I was also getting older and wanted
something new. Ayahuasca gave me an instant answer — the
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
story across time — good against evil. Two entangled women —
one in the past one in the present — are brought together across
time by this angelic being an entity whom I associate with
Mother Ayahuasca. She could be real, she could be in our mind
— who cares — most people experiencing ayahuasca see her. The
Blue Angel is the benign supernatural force — who brings the
two women together to do battle against the demon who wishes
us to take a dark and evil path. And role of women is to resist.
They have to resist as they understand that some force in the
universe wants us not to recognise that we have a divine spark. I
was shown scenes, battles and episodes, and I was told 'Han-
cock you were wrong about the Neanderthals'.
I first drank ayahuasca when researching for the book Su-
pernatural as I had wanted to experience first-hand these
shamanic altered states of consciousness rather than just reading
about them. In that book I had misrepresented the Neander-
thals. I was persuaded by what was then the mainstream aca-
demic line — that they were not symbolic creatures — that yes
they had big brains — bigger than ours —yes they had been in
command of Ice-Age Europe for 200,000 years — but they
were stupid, brutish, no symbolic or spiritual life — their burials
were unimportant — their culture was accidental, etc. And I had
thought fair enough' and I depicted them that way. But what I
was shown in my ayahuasca visions was that it was not so —
they were creative, spiritual creatures. Our ancestors would not
have survived had they not learnt from the Neanderthals. It was
a revelation to me that I got it all wrong that I had done them
disservice. Entangled was my opportunity to put it right — to
show that Neanderthals were good and decent people — they
were pure love and goodness who communicated telepathically —
and that although they left little cave painting they painted their
bodies. Furthermore, they taught our ancestors how to paint.
Researchers have shown that origin of modern human behav-
iour may well have been brought about by assimilation. Terence
McKenna even thought this in Food for the Gods. It came to
me in inspiration that the Neanderthals introduced our ancestors
to sacred visionary medicines, from which they understood about
painting. There may even have been interbreeding and current
research is investigating that. The Neanderthals taught our
ancestors all this, and I feel I've done them justice in the novel.
I've portrayed them as my vision — as goodness and love — and
now academic research is proving this theory right, that they
may have even interbred. All this I received in the vision, and it
makes me quite emotional. I got many insights in the visions —
at the heart of it is the dualistic view of the universe — battle of
good and evil and the importance of humans to choose. A catch
line — evil may not always be defeated, but it will always be
resisted.
William: Human life has always been about territo-
rial conflict, batdes, skirmishes. Why the need to pre-
sent it as a choice between good and evil rather than
Vol. 4 No. 3
many cultural, social even biological polarities that do
not imply such value?
Graham: 50 to 40,000 years ago the first anatomically
modern humans arrived in Western Europe. I see no evidence
for violent, negative, aggressive behaviour. The fundamental
question in Entangled is what actually happened to the Ne-
anderthals? This is a mystery of prehistory. One theory is that
our ancestors, having co-existed with them for 20,000 years,
ended up wiping them out. Perhaps something in them changed
- some influence — that caused them suddenly to turn on the
Neanderthals. That possibility is left open in Entangled - but
it is presented. This is the crux of Entangled. Over 24,000
years the two girls become entangled, and Ria feels that it is her
duty to prevent our ancestors wiping them out, in order to pay
off some karmic debt for having done so. The demonic form
gains his psychic charge by encouraging the humans to wipe out
the Neanderthals. What emerges in the sequence of novels is
that annihilation by anatomically modern human beings is
stopped, that they die out for other reasons, and that we don't
incur this karmic debt. Something changes in humans from the
end of the upper Palaeolithic into the Neolithic — we become
violent. And that's where I entertain the notion of dark entities
at the spiritual level, and positive energies of resistance. And the
human dilemma is always to choose.
A friend of mine calls this world of ours 'a university of
duality. ' I think this is interesting. A lot of people reject the idea
of duality and would like everything to be one — that it is all
beautiful and good — and that all duality is projection. But I'm
not sure how much we would have to learn in a world like that.
I think that duality is a very useful teaching tool, and that
without it is difficult to make choices. In this particular experi-
ence duality has very important lessons to teach us — and if it
were taken away what choices would we have to make?
William: But is there not a danger that a choice
might be made in the assumption that it was good,
and that history shows it not to be so? Does duality
not go against mystical traditions of unity - that the
good and the bad are always together - a harmony of
polarities?
Graham: Interesting points. In ancient Egypt the duality
was Horus versus Set. Horus and Set in the same head. I don't
disagree that there isn't an overarching oneness, but I still feel
that if you remove the duality you remove a useful teaching tool.
Science tells us that it is all but an accident, a random proc-
esses. There is no such thing as the spirit. When we die we die.
End of story. There is no transcendent purpose. Science may be
right. But it may be wrong — and another possibility must be
considered. Consciousness may be a part of the universe rather
than an epiphenomenon of brain activity. Our incarnation may
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
be an opportunity to learn and to choose. Perhaps, as many
spiritual traditions show, we have many opportunities; and
consequently we have the choice - and yes, one culture's good
may be another culture's bad. Few people would dispute, for
example, that there are cases when the killing of a person may
be justified. Does the action that I'm about to take add or reduce
misery? If we ask ourselves those questions, what is good and
evil become clearer to define. In the case of Hitler, had someone
killed him in 1937, they would have prevented the transgression
of the sovereignty of millions of people. 1 Very fine distinctions
are to be made. But if we examine our hearts, we have some
kind of compass on this - and that we do know the good and
the bad — and that it is not entirely culturally constrained.
William: In your novels, investing so much narrative
space to the darkness, are you in some way exorcis-
ing? Is your choice here to focus on the darkness a
means to open it up? Is there some purpose?
Graham: Yes, in the novels I do dwell to some extent on
negative human behaviour. As a human and a writer it is diffi-
cult, it causes me pain, but I feel it is essential. Why? Because
as a species we have a capacity for denial. When something is
bad we look away ~ and by looking away we allow the evil to
flourish. We need to focus on it. Many people who don't like
Entangled don't like it became of the violence. I've received
many letters. They say that it is all goodness and light and we
must focus on it. I respond that nothing in the novel is made up
by me. All the darkness, such as the castration of one's enemies
and the wearing of the genitals on one's head; all of this has
happened. There are other forms of human sacrifice, some of
which are still being practiced by humans today. If we turn
away and concentrate only on goodness, we allow such matters
to continue. So what I'm doing with this writing is to focus
precisely on these matters. Ib put it right up front. Here it is.
This happens. Deal with it. If we're going to move on - and at
the moment the world is in a dark place — horrendous things are
happening — we're not going to solve the problems by pretending
they don't exist. And in order to confront them we have to ex-
press them.
And my writing expresses this — not with a sense of revel-
ling in the horror, but to show the reader what these things are,
and hopefully raise the opportunity to address them in the future.
I also show goodness. I show choice. Cortes could have made
different choices. Moctezuma could have made different choices
— and I'm intrigued to think what could have happened to the
world had Cortes not made the decisions he made. It seems im-
plausible that Cortes should have achieved what he did with so
few men. This gigantic and truly violent state of the Mexica
(Aztecs) was immensely violent, practising human sacrifice.
How could the bunch of freebooters overthrow this? I try to
show how they managed it. Had Moctezuma acted with com-
passion and diplomacy towards his fellow peoples; had he
shown more tolerance and not acted as he did then they would
not have allied themselves to Cortes. All these folk detested the
Aztecs, and so it is very reasonable that these folk joined Cortes.
Had the Aztecs made that choice, then Cortes would have been
presented with a united font on the shores of eastern Mexico.
Consequently the entire venture of European colonialism would
have had to have been rethought. Had they been greeted by a
powerful and united force in Mexico, I feel that it would have
affected the entire way the Europe operated elsewhere. It's obvi-
ous with the conquest of the Inca. It is also obvious more
widely around the world that European powers were persuaded
that they could easily destroy these so-called primitive societies.
William: But in War God there seems little hope of
any redemption, of any light that will resist this in-
credible force of darkness. Can we assume this light
will come? Will it come through Tozi and Malinal, or
through a spiritual force like the Blue Angel in Entan-
gled? "
Graham: Yes - absolutely — there will be redemption. This
is very much a part of books 2 and 3. Goodness is through
Tozi, Malinal and Pepillo. What I'm trying to show is that
even in the worst circumstances — in the midst of overwhelming
wickedness — it is possible for goodness and love to thrive and
prevail. World War Two shows this to be the case: in the midst
of the worst atrocities there were examples of goodness. I don't
want to turn away from the darkness of the period. Even if
goodness didn't win, it did speak out for what we can achieve —
and yes —perhaps through supernatural intervention.
William: You suggest in Heaven's Mirror and Finger-
prints of the Gods that the Mexica inherited from previ-
ous cultures a religious practice of sacrifice that had
been symbolic, and that, unable to relate to this sym-
bolic perspective, they twisted and distorted the prac-
tice into the very literal and real practice of human
sacrifice. Have you developed this line of enquiry in
your research and writing of War God and its sequels?
Graham: Yes — my research over the years leads me to believe
the appearance over the world of similar spiritual traditions,
especially manifested through archaeology — pyramids, for ex-
ample. This planet is a theatre of experience in which man has
the opportunity to grow and learn — as the hermetic texts put it
1 This is a big canard - as Graham argued that one might have justified the murder of Hitler before the war. Is this not pre-
ventative warfare? Pre-emptive strikes? This is problematic on theological, philosophical and practical grounds.
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
- to tend the material world — but also to grow at the spiritual
level — and in order to do so we need to detach from the spiritual
world. One has to pay attention to the material world, but it is
not everything. There is a need to earn a living and put food on
our table. But that is not what we are here to do. We are here to
perfect the spirit. The ancient Egyptians knew this. They knew
that we have to grow spiritually. It's not about accumulating
material growth and many ancient cultures — including Christi-
anity — knew this. It has a shamanistic element also. We are
dealing with spiritual and physical realms. Even Christianity
has this idea. If you look deeply you find a shamanistic trend
within Christianity — especially with the Gnostics — who to my
mind were keeping alive an ancient Egyptian tradition. What
happened was that the bureaucrats and moneymen came in and
changed Christianity to the notion of obedience to the priests.
And this brings me back to the Gnostic idea that the priestly
class — and the church itself — are a demonic force. . .
If you go back to the Gnostics of the early Christian era
they have a radical and disturbing view to any person of the
three Abrahamic faiths: that Tahweh, familiar to Christianity,
Judaism and Islam, is the Demiurge. He is demonic — evil. He
has imposed himself and seeks to be worshipped. That's how
you start to understand the horrific actions of Tahweh. He is a
brutal being. The Gnostics understood this. But they believed
that the demiurge was involved in the creation of humanity, and
that the divine spark is in man. The whole Gnostic project is to
liberate that spark in man. So the Gnostics turned the garden of
evil around — the serpent is good - the Tree Of Life can be
reached - the demiurge wants you not to eat — and this is pro-
foundly disturbing for Christians. Indeed in the mediaeval times
it led to horrendous persecution of such a heresy.
My feeling is that there was a lost civilisation and a spiri-
tual tradition that taught us to focus on spiritual development.
This was expressed through metaphors, such as the sacrifice of
the body as a means of not focusing on the body too much, of
not being distracted from the spiritual. There was a whole range
of metaphors. What I think happened as this system devolved
was that later traditions misinterpreted this, and where sacrifice
was metaphorical it was taken literal — like the Aztecs — and
was taken as an instruction to sacrifice bodies. This became
part of the ritual of human sacrifice being somehow pleasing to
the gods. This is a perverted interpretation of an ancient teach-
ing.
William: Were the Christians autos-da-fe sacrifices
also?
Graham: Indeed. The humbug of the Christians! It was
indeed a sacrifice when someone was burnt at the stake; to save
the soul through murder. Humbug! I make this point in War
God. It is no different.
***
The point that Graham raised led me to a question
that I have presented to my students, and which often
taxes me. Can we understand, and even forgive, the
actions of the brutalising colonists and the inquisito-
rial clerics if we understand their ideological back-
ground? Can we enter their mind-set and consider
that they earnestly believed that the Indians were
damned souls because of their savagery and igno-
rance, and that therefore if they can convert them to
Christianity they are rendering them the most blessed
of gifts, salvation of their eternal souls! Likewise with
heresy If heresy is a mortal sin, then by torturing the
heretic you are encouraging him to renounce the
heresy. You are thus trying to save him. If heresy, fur-
thermore, is a disease that may be spread amongst
the populace, then the Inquisitors are acting in the
public interest by rooting out the heretics, and thus
saving the people's eternal souls. From our modern
perspective such a position is unequivocally atrocious,
and I often observe members of the class horrified by
the thought that one might even permit a justification for
this abuse. Can one forgive, or, as many of my stu-
dents would aver, is it more likely that such persecu-
tion was merely a theological justification for territo-
rial land-grab, a smokescreen for empire -building,
conquest and plunder?
Graham: Good point. I have no doubt that some of the In-
quisitors believed that they were doing the right thing that they
were saving the soul of the individual being consigned to the
flames. Whilst this excuses nothing it does explain how some-
one was able to do horrendous acts while believing they were
doing good things.
William: And the same could be said of Mocte-
zuma?
Graham: Indeed. As I investigate this period it has become
clear to me that individuals who today we would classify as
psychopaths were drawn to these roles, as it gave them the justi-
fication to do what they really loved doing — namely inflicting
pain and suffering on their fellow man. There are too many
inquisitors who quite clearly gained pleasure from this. This
must be taken into account. Secondly we are shaped by cultural
context. But there is too much of a tendency of our modern
world to contextualise and to think that it is all a product of
our conditioning. I disagree with this. We are responsible for our
actions.
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Serendipitously, the interview with Graham ties in
well with a Masters project I am supervising concern-
ing cultural interchange between Europe and Mexico
- trans culturation - focussing on the Christians who
were desperately trying to bring peace and love and
good blessing, and who rose up and shouted out
against the brutality of their countrymen. Not only
well-known cases like the friars Montesinos, Ber-
nardino de Sahagiin and Bartolome de Las Casas -
but also poor mendicant friars who entered villages
with nothing but a bible, who learnt the indigenous
languages, who translated sacred texts into and from
these languages, who saw indigenous people as fel-
lows. We owe much to these folk for helping to re-
strain the excesses of conquest and helped to preserve
some of the indigenous languages, texts, mythologies
and cosmologies.
Graham: Indeed. Take, for example, the case of Bartolome
Olmeda, who urged Cortes not to destroy the idols and not to
impose Christianity, maintaining that there is no point in forced
conversion. Cortes was a man with a fanatical streak which
made him excessive. Consider Las Casas and Sahagiin: these
guys had been through the cultural conditioning, and yet they
had the courage to resist it and to say, No! This is wrong. We
condemn it. We will expose the horror of this. They detested
what was being done. Amazing that Las Casas was never exe-
cuted. He seems like a modern human rights activists — what
courage! It was possible even then to rise above cultural condi-
tioning.
We do have choice. This is the issue. We may be con-
strained by circumstances, but we can always make a choice not
to inflict suffering on others. Most people in the Sixteenth Cen-
tury didn't make this choice. They may not have been allowed
to, but they still could have done so.
That is the other side of my novels. I talk about Aztec
wickedness and I talk of Spanish wickedness and I show the
opposition, like Olmeda. I focus on Munoz in order to show the
reality of the Inquisition — this horrendous destruction of pre-
existing knowledge — the codices - the horrible murder of people
under the pretext that they were heathens. The population of
Central America plummeted from 30 million to 1 million in 50
years. This is demonic however you look at it.
Such a position helps us understand Cortes. It's not so long
ago that the cultural model of territorial appropriation was still
present. It is how it still is today. I mean frankly, when a drone
kills 190 people at a blow, none of whom having performed
any act of violence against the West, this is sacrifice, murder,
just like the Aztecs or the Inquisitors. We likewise today have
our own mechanisms for justifying our actions of aggression.
Before we condemn those in the past we should look closely at
ourselves.
Vol. 4 No. 3
William: Certainly - and one method by which I re-
late the past with the present in class is to call the Val-
ladolid Debate of 1550 - in which the churchmen
Las Casas and Sepiilveda debated the treatment and
enslavement of the indigenous Americans — an 'en-
quiry' We are familiar with the Hutton Enquiry
(which failed to reach any firm resolution on the
atrocities of the invasion of Iraq). Well, if we take the
royal debate as being a public view of the horrors of
a so-called 'just war' then we can see the parallels
with today. A scrutiny of the underlying notion that
'our values are right — theirs are wrong' There was
resistance at the time of Cortes. There is resistance
today.
Graham: Right — and at least today we're not burnt at the
stake for resisting. But still the powerful state apparatus uses
our money to brutalise people, to impose their will on other cul-
tures and upon us. The internet is a tool and a forum for resis-
tance. However, nothing has really changed. The state still
imposes its will, with the same belief that our system is the
right one, others are false. This is utter humbug and totally
disrespectful for other ways of life. And our job in the present
age is to resist that tooth and nail and to prevent it happening
whenever we see it.
William: You have talked recently about the 'reverse
missionary movement', in which ayahuasceros and
curanderos of the Amazon are reaching out to the West
- to the gringos who have traditionally persecuted
them - in order to spread the word of Mother Aya-
huasca - in order to instil a vision of nature, peace,
harmony, and in order to demonstrate to western
collective consciousness the gradual suicide of the
human race that is currently taking place under the
stewardship of western governance. Do you think this
reverse missionary movement is gathering momen-
tum? Is the pay-off not immense, in that the gringo
culture may well appropriate ayahuasca traditions,
debase them, commercialise them, demonise them,
etc.? Is the impact of ayahuasca tourism a concern?
Graham: This is a complex issue. Firstly, the experience of
contact with an entity or a spirit, that ingestion of ayahuasca
induces — nobody could fault me for saying that this experience
is widespread — that people who have drunk ayahuasca all
around the world experience an entity whom they name Mother
Ayahuasca. She might be a serpent, which alarms fundamental-
ist Christians. Sometimes she comes as a beautiful woman. But
in all cases she comes to teach us something. And those teaching
are at many levels. People might receive teachings about their
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
own lives, about the mistakes they may be making, and I re-
cently published an article about this — about how Mother Aya-
huasca stopped me in my tracks with a 24 year cannabis habit.
I have nothing against cannabis — nothing at all. It has creative
and healing properties, and I highly respect the medical mari-
juana movement. However, there is the question of our individ-
ual relationship with cannabis. As a 24-year smoker I realised
that I needed to change, as it brought on paranoia. It made me
jealous of my wife and partner. And what I was shown in the
ayahuasca sessions was that all of this was connected to my
servitude to cannabis. I needed to stop; otherwise I would fall
into an abyss from which my soul would never recover. All of
this was shown to me terrijyingly starkly in the ayahuasca vi-
sions. So much so that when I returned from those sessions in
Oct 2011 after those five sessions in Brazil, I couldn't smoke
again. No withdrawal symptoms — no irritability — nothing -
all gone from my life. I received a teaching in those visions that
was important to me. Folk who have been addicted to heroin or
cocaine have reported similar experiences when working with
ayahuasca.
And I can't prove anything about the spirit of the vine —
about any of this — but all I can say is, until you have drunk
ayahuasca, hold back your judgments. Have a few ceremonies
and then see how you feel about this entity. And then consider
that your understanding of reality may not be as you thought -
and that there may be another realm of reality in which such
beings do exist.
Personally, I think that there's an intelligence there, an entity
who cares for us and for our species. This is what I've felt after
fifty or so ayahuasca sessions. But I can prove nothing.
Secondly, in ayahuasca sessions, folk report an intense feel-
ing of sadness about the environment — particularly about the
rain forests. Something has gone terribly wrong about the human
relationship with the planet. The destruction of the forests is a
dreadful, dreadful mistake that is contrary to what we should be
here for. A huge opportunity to learn from nature is being taken
away from us. It has to stop. This is a repeated experience of
drinkers.
And so it is an interesting coincidence that just as the Ama-
zon is being destroyed, this spirit that has always been confined
to the jungle is moving around the world to deliver these teach-
ings.
I feel that there is some intentionality behind this.
In the Amazon they always talk about the intelligence in the
vine. How it grabs the leaves in order to gain access to the hu-
man mind. If there is a goddess or entity, it is pretty clear that
this entity cannot intervene on this material plain. But it can
intervene through affecting human consciousness. That's what is
happening. And people are receiving these teachings, which leads
to a wish to change the direction of humanity.
Vol. 4 No. 3
William: Will ayahuasca endure the capitalist urge
to commercialise and commodify? Is she doing a job
beyond that which can be sullied?
Graham: Yes — I feel that the job she is doing will rise above
this. And, of course, there are people preparing ayahuasca for
purely commercial gain, people who don't really understand how
to work with ha. As such I would urge anybody who wants to
work with ayahuasca to do their research — to use word of
mouth. A bit like Gnostic sects in the early Christian era -
underground, illegal, disrespected and discredited. Learn from
the experiences of others and rely on their anecdotes.
William: But deeper than that, are there not some
shamans working for nefarious goals? Something you
explored in Entangled. And further to that question,
you recently submitted that: "It would be a good thing I
couldn't help thinking if every military leader, every religious
fanatic, every president, every prime minister, every dictator
presently exercising power in the world were to be required to
undergo ten sessions of Ayahuasca before being allowed to make
a single other decision." How, from this perspective, do
you imagine the great circus of geo-politics would be
different were such leaders to experience the brew?
How do we know that if Dick Cheney drank the
brew, he would not simply gain more power towards
his power-hungry goals?
Graham: Good question. Firstly, with the brew, a door into
another dimension is opened. What's out there isn't only mother
ayahuasca — there are other entities out there as well. I believe
in some sense that the duality of good and evil in this realm is
driven by the good and evil in the spirit realm. And there are
entities that seem to thrive in a vampire-like way on human
suffering and misery and on negative human behaviour.
William: Like Moctezuma and mushrooms
Graham: Absolutely. The Aztecs went down a dark path
with mushrooms, opening a channel between Moctezuma and
Huitzipolochi.
William: Or Charles Manson and LSD
Graham: Yes. Some people make these choices in this realm
and in that realm. People have actively to want to be attracted
to this negative aspect. Therefore if we gave ayahuasca to a
power-hungry man could he simply become more powerful?
Perhaps. But, what can control against that is the set and set-
ting in which the experience is followed. We call them shamans,
and our job is to develop a form of shamanism relevant to our
culture. Some brujos — sorcerers — are doing the opposite of
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
protecting this space, but are opening the door to negative influ-
ences. I actually believe that were Cheney given a series of ses-
sions in the right protected space with a skilled and experienced
shaman — then it is my belief that he would undergo a pro-
found spiritual transformation. So I believe the teaching needs to
be handled in a wise and guided way.
William: Has your relationship with the craft of
writing changed since engaging in the process of fic-
tion writing?
Graham: I'm enjoying writing fiction. Mot so much the
scenes of violence, but the exercise of not defending every argu-
ment and writing footnotes for every assertion. It is liberating to
be free of that. In the case of War God / have done much
research into the history, and I do refer to that reading. This has
allowed me to get into the heads of the characters. Once you
start to get inside the head of Cortes, you start to understand
things better about these historical characters. The whole his-
torical canvas has opened up for me in a way like never before.
The first responsibility as a writer of fiction is not to bore the
reader.
William: As for non-fiction
Graham: Ok, but it is different. There are different argu-
ments conveyed in non-fiction. Ultimately fiction is about the
experience more than non-fiction. It's about not delivering every-
thing at once — about trying to immerse the reader in a visceral
way in the historical period. It's been an interesting experience
for me to try to portray these scenes, especially the battles.
But the second thing is about having something to soy, about
doing something more than merely entertain the reader. The
writer must give the readers the sense that they have found some-
thing out — something of value that they didn't know before.
That's why I think I will continue fiction, as I can explore
extraordinary ideas with a freedom that I didn't have before.
There is of course a need for scholarly criticism — for conserva-
tism even — as the fire of criticism of new ideas is fundamen-
tally a good thing. We can't naively accept every thought put out
there as fact. Indeed, if an idea survives that fire then something
is in the theory. But, there's a history of throwing the baby out
with the water with the rejection of ideas. The gate keepers are
so furious that they look always for what is weak and not look-
ing for the strengths.
William: Every new generation needs to start from
scratch. Myers wrote a century ago in Human Personal-
ity and Its Survival of Bodily Death: "Now it is that we
feel the difficulty of being definite without being triv-
ial; how little of earthly memory persists; how little of
heavenly experience can be expressed in terms of
Vol. 4 No. 3
earth; how long and arduous must be the way, how
many must be the experiments, and how many the
failures before any systemised body of new truth can
be established. But a sound beginning has been
made, and whatever may be possible hereafter need
not be wasted on a fresh start." How can we prevent
constantly having to start again?
Graham: By considering the knowledge and wisdom of the
ancients. In 2015 I hope to publish the next part of Finger-
prints. New theories are coming through which support the
hypothesis of lost civilisation, that support the dating of an
immense comet impact in 10,900 BCE — exactly the window
I suggested in Fingerprints. / suggested this in 1995 but
there was no evidence. I tried earth-crust displacement and other
things. This new work on the comet impact is compellingly
suggestive of the kind of event that could have wiped out a
civilisation. Then Gobekli Tepe in Turkey was discovered,
where they are firm that the older layers are over 12,000 years
ago. This is accepted, but not the implications. What this says
about human history is not being discussed. Gobekli Tepe is a
large site of multi-ton megaliths — no background to the culture
— how come? Something missing in our story — missing in that
time window when we appear to know that the earth was hit by
a comet. That missing background intrigues me. I feel it hides
the lost civilisation. The other interesting thing is carbon- dating.
Tou can't date stone; so the way it's done is to date organic ma-
terials associated. This assumption has driven the timeline. The
problem is that many of these sites are approached not in their
pristine states. All kinds of things may have happened to these
sites: many communities may have lived there; the stones may
have been moved, etc. I've long suggested that some megalithic
sites are far older than the carbon-dating record shows. There is
something different at Gobekli Tepe. Work started about
12,000 years ago then about 10,000 it was deliberately cov-
ered up. We don't know why. It was hidden and preserved.
That's why the Germans can be certain of its date. That is
very important. It raises question marks over other sites - the
Maltese — the Tala in Menorca — which have the same T
shape - 1 think it challenges the dating of all megalithic sites.
William: There are many mysteries that accompany
any reflection on megalithic sites the world over -
concerning the carving, the moving, the erecting, and
the joining, of such immense blocks. The most persis-
tent explanation of these questions invariably involves
man-hours - that with enough people over enough
years such structures as Callanish, Cheops, Tihua-
naco or Machu Picchu are possible - and there the
mystery ends.
However, would you agree that, regardless of the
mysteries of motives, the significance of the align-
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Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
ments, and the ritual functions, there are questions
about the moving and raising of the stones them-
selves that defy the explanations that have been of-
fered? Do you feel that there was some technology,
some harnessing of energy, that was known by mega-
lithic builders that we neither know nor understand
today? You illustrate one perspective of this in Entan-
gled. By what means do you imagine that we may be
able to recover this technology?
Graham: / share your intuition. It has been my privilege to
climb the Great Pyramid jive times. I simply cannot envisage
man-hours. It's almost magical. The same is true of Sacsay-
huaman in Peru. It literally beggars belief. I defy man-hours. I
strongly believe a technology was employed that we don't know
or understand. We think of mechanical advantage — and as we
develop there the powers of the mind are diminished. It seems
that there is a mind-matter influence. And our society have left
that faculty go dormant. In the past, I think they had great use
of that; sound, chants, etc. That's one thing I hope to do in the
sequel to Fingerprints. We've a long way to go. We need to
overcome our own reference frame. I think the megaliths are
important. Something important about ourselves that we've
forgotten about ourselves and that we desperately need to recover.
***
We ended the interview there, although I could hap-
pily have continued the rap for the rest of the after-
noon. Off-camera I did manage to ask the one ques-
tion that I had been itching to ask since reading Su-
pernatural back in 2005, and which I hadn't managed
to ask when I spoke to Graham at Breaking Convention:
what happens on your mushroom trip at Avebury at the end of
Supernatural? Eager for a story about machine-elves
cavorting around the megaliths, I received the poetic
response: 'not much, really' At least one mystery was
solved. . .
The mystery of good and evil, however, persists.
My Libran and liberal constitution urges me to resist
Graham's invocation to perceive the world in terms
of good and evil. I strongly wish to see nothing more
than a vast network of values interacting and conflict-
ing and generating friction. My willed position is that
there are no values beyond the context; that forces
that may be labelled good or evil are constantly in
opposition and are forever morphing into other forces
with other values ascribed to them. One can attempt
to resist evil knowing that evil will never be overcome,
because there is no such thing. It's just a contextual
and contingent value. Likewise oppression, aggres-
sion, violence - there's no genus of these matters - just
Vol. 4 No. 3
values that are placed upon acts that just are. Fur-
thermore, whilst you are resisting 'evil' in one corner
of the globe, someone else is resisting the 'evil' caused
by you in another. Systems become oppressive
through numbers. You resist a system that is only op-
pressive because it has many people helping it along.
In fact, you yourself are most likely putting your
shoulder to the wheel of the very system that you are
now trying to resist. Then you realise there is no sys-
tem - there are just endless interacting processes that
themselves are endlessly interacting processes. Push
somewhere and something will move somewhere else.
This is the position that I try to maintain, yet I under-
stand that such a position can become a nominalist
chaos. Graham makes this clear - dualism is a useful
teaching tool. Sitting on the fence is not effective re-
sistance.
I reflected on why the presentation of violence
and brutality in Entangled and War God was of such
importance to me. I came to realise that I was critical
- disdainful even - of the depiction of sacrifice, tor-
ture, sadism, warfare and bloodshed in both novels.
Was Graham not dwelling on these horrors to an
unwholesome degree? Is there not something unsa-
voury about such graphic images? 'Absolutely' was
his pragmatic answer, 'I am dwelling on these matters
to an unwholesome degree, because we cannot pre-
tend that this savagery has not, and does not, take
place.' This is central to the vision that Graham de-
scribes being given with ayahuasca. We cannot ignore
the darkness.
I then understood that Graham could easily have
come back to me 'but you do the same!', and with
good reason, as I have run an annual open lecture at
the university to which I have invited speakers, such
as human rights lawyers and journalists and even a
former captive at Guantanamo, to demonstrate to the
audience the horrors that are committed by our gov-
ernments in our name. Were someone critically to say
to me, 'oh, you shouldn't be doing that. Why dwell on
torture and incarceration?' I would reply, 'on the con-
trary, I don't do it enough — not enough at all, as I shy
away from such matters as soon as I can under the
justification that I shouldn't fill my life with darkness.'
The suffering of torture in captivity is no different
now than it was at the time of Cortes. That is the
point, regardless of its name, whether 'evil' or 'bad'
or 'nasty' or 'dark.' If you are tortured, or witness the
murder of your friends and family, or hear the sound
of gunfire meant for you - you are not going to smile
calmly and say - 'I accept this as a manifestation of
the Unified Good.' You are not going to confront
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your torturer or the killer of your children with 'Hey
there! I don't really believe that you're evil — in fact I
love you. . .' We may all aspire to such mystic bliss, but
it is unlikely to save you. It will not stop them hurting
you, and it will not stop it hurting.
That, I understood, is precisely the opposition that
is developed in Graham's novels. The characters
learn to love and trust, and in this way they oppose
hate. Love is naturally loving. Hate is naturally hating.
Ria and Leoni resist the terrible Sulpa in Entangled
not by loving him, but by loving and trusting and
helping each other. Tozi, Malinal and Pepillo in War
God likewise oppose the hatred of their oppressors not
by loving them, but by loving each other. There is a
pragmatic, battle-weary realistic aspect to these con-
flicts.
Sulpa, Huitzilopochtli and St Peter are discarnate
entities inflicting their sordid lust for conflict and
desolation upon humans; 'That's what demons do'
Graham declared, 'multiply human misery' Is there
something chilling in this depiction of the power of
malevolent demons, especially given that Graham
experienced visions of these forces in ayahuasca en-
counters? Again, Graham's pragmatic and valuable
response is that just as we cannot turn our backs on
human cruelty, neither can we assume that all intelli-
gent entities of the spiritual world are benign. On the
contrary, as he explained so thoroughly, shamans and
curanderos need to be particularly adept at navigating
these otherworld landscapes and deflecting the influ-
ence of mischievous or downright nasty entities in
order to open the healing space and prevent pain and
suffering. Above all they need to be resolute enough
to resist the lure of power that emanates from these
more malign beings. Entangled depicts this struggle
through a brujo who derives power to do harm and
the shamans who need confront these brujos in the
visionary realm. This is real. This is how it is, and
nobody who has drunk ayahuasca, or attended any
meeting in which non-material beings are contacted,
or read Swedenborg, would be naive enough to sup-
pose that all there is angelic and benign.
Graham's readers will naturally be drawn into
speculation about major historical conflicts and the
invocation of these dark entities. This is a weird and
unsettling area of exploration, as the speculation can
escalate into a feeling that such conflicts are created
and controlled by non-material intelligences. It need
not be so dramatic. If, as anyone sympathetic to the
matter would aver, there are further dimensions of
reality populated by discarnate souls of the dead and
non-human entities (something Graham explores lu-
Vol. 4 No. 3
cidly in Supernatural), then it is perfectly appropriate to
assume that human participants in such worldly con-
flicts may have derived power or knowledge from
these entities. Shamans, brujos and curanderos do so on
a daily basis in more localised conflicts. The relation-
ships between Cortes and St Peter or between Moc-
tezuma and Huitzilopochtli are thus far less outland-
ish than may be assumed. They are part of the cur-
rency of reality only on a vast scale. The burning
question is not whether this occurs, but according to
which ideologies. If Christian world leaders invoke
God prior to launching a campaign of aggression
against Islam; if a Moslem invokes Allah prior to re-
taliating with equally indiscriminate hostilities; or if
Jewish settlers invoke their God prior to clearing a
land of its non-Jewish occupants, are they invoking
spiritual forces of compassion and love, or of hatred
and violence? To whom are they really praying?
This, of course, is the link with Graham's work
Talisman, which looks at the troubled history of eso-
teric gnostic thought which has stealthily crept
through the alleys and byways of history, occasionally
blossoming in moments like Alexandria in the early
Christian Roman period, the Cathar era of southern
France and the Pyrenees, and the Florentine Renais-
sance. The message that Graham takes to be central
of this ancient lineage of heretical thought is that the
Christian god is not the prime creator, but a lesser
entity - the Demiurge - who demands worship and
obedience and instils hatred and fear. The structure
of the church is thus a political institution in the serv-
ice of this malevolent supernatural despot. The hor-
ror of European colonial conquest, the Inquisition,
the brutal suppression of heresy such as the Albigen-
sian Crusade, and endless wars of aggression can
thus be understood as influenced by the presence of
this demiurgic force. Graham, aware that this posi-
tion may well offend, has discussed this in many pres-
entations and interviews over the last few years, and
one can see its integral relationship with the narra-
tives of his two novels.
Hans Jonas describes in The Gnostic Religion the
turbulent landscape out of which diverse religious-
spiritual schools of gnostic thought arose especially in
the Hellenised parts of the Roman Empire in the first
centuries after Christ. This was a period of such cul-
tural upheaval, of such calamities and conflicts, and
of such an eradication of earlier spiritual models,
that inevitably many folk looked upon their troubled
landscapes and questioned whether this could really
be the work of a great, ineffable and perfect god. It
was reasonable to assume that it was not. As Graham
77
Paeanthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
and Robert Bauval explore in Talisman, there was also
the attempt amongst these gnostic communities to
keep alive more ancient, pantheistic, mystical and
perhaps harmonious spiritual teachings. This, argues
Graham, is the parallel with the modern world,
where destruction of the natural world and of the
biosphere has reached such proportions that it would
appear that human life itself is threatened; where
corporatism and imperialism proliferate violence and
enslavement and where individual human gnosis is
declared anathema. The gnostic heresy is a wisdom
that teaches people to question these brutalising insti-
tutions, to challenge their hegemony over the values
of individuals and communities, and to experience
the mysteries of reality first hand, joyfully. This is the
wisdom that is always persecuted by the institutions,
whether Church or State, or, as is so often the case,
the Church-State brotherhood. Interestingly, Graham
sees the gnosis of ayahuasca traditions and experi-
ences as being analogous to the ancient gnostic tradi-
tions in the West.
One need not accept as gospel the dualistic,
Manichean, view of good and evil in order to recog-
nise the powerful spiritual wisdom in these gnostic
traditions. One of Terence McKenna's more beauti-
ful and melancholic presentations is Unfolding the Stone,
in which, like Hans Jonas, he examines the traditions
of alchemy beginning in the unsettled era of the
early Christian years of the late Roman Empire. The
vision of good and evil was of less importance to
McKenna than were the twin radical gnostic teach-
ings which rocked both the Greco-Hellenic world and
the Roman-Christian world: that we are all divine,
luminous, beings; and that fate can be overcome
through magic. This, again, is the connection that is
made both by Terence and by Graham between ex-
panded consciousness achieved through psychedelics
and gnostic esotericism. This is the powerful narra-
tive of both of Graham's novels. Evil will not be
overcome, as it is a force beyond the control of man-
kind, but it can be resisted. Fate can be overcome
simply because we can choose our paths. We are not
bound to consent to the control over our sovereignty
that state and state religion demand. The further we
explore the immeasurable capacity of our conscious-
ness, whether with the assistance of psychedelics or
through other empowering practices, the more we
can understand how political structures can belittle
and ridicule such capacities. This is what Ria and
Tozi understand. This is what Leoni and Pepillo un-
derstand. We can overcome fate through the magic of
resistance.
Vol. 4 No. 3
I write this while the press reveals the full extent of
state secret surveillance, while the Bilderberg Group
meets in secrecy to draft global policy, and while Brit-
ish Foreign Secretary William Hague delivers the poi-
soned words 'if you've done nothing wrong you've
nothing to be afraid of How arbitrary might the
state's judgment of right and wrong be. How easily
might one be branded a heretic. How readily do we
relinquish power for security. How fickly is this secu-
rity. How gleefully do we surrender our power to cor-
porations, interacting socially through mechanisms
that so easily become systems of surveillance. How
gladly do we accept that we are not divine beings.
How urgent is the current appeal to resist. . .
Biographies
William Rowlandson is a
Senior Lecturer in Hispanic
Studies at the University of
Kent, and former Director of
the Centre for the Study of
Myth. He has recently com-
pleted a book concerning
Borges and mysticism, which
examines the relationship
between Borges' own re-
corded mystical experiences
and his appraisal of Sweden-
borg and other mystics. The book asks the essential ques-
tion of whether Borges was a mystic by analysing his writ-
ings, including short stories, essays, poems and interviews,
alongside scholarly writings on mysticism by figures such
as William James. William's work within the Myth Centre
has focused predominantly on the many aspects of the
work of Jung. With co-Director Angela Voss, William organ-
ised a conference at the University of Kent in May 2011
entitled Daimonic Imagination: Uncanny Intelligence.
Graham Hancock is the author of
The Sign and The Seal, Fingerprints
of the Gods, Keeper Of Genesis,
Heaven's Mirror, and other bestsell-
ing investigations of historical mys-
teries. His recent work focuses on
shamanism and the origins of relig-
ion. His 2005 book, Supernatural:
Meetings with The Ancient Teachers
of Mankind, suggests that experi-
ences in altered states of con-
sciousness have played a funda-
mental role in the evolution of hu-
man culture and that other realities
not normally accessible to our senses may surround us at
all times. While researching Supernatural. His experiences
with the ayahuasca lead to his first novel, Entangled. His
latest book War God was published earlier this year. His
books have sold more than five million copies worldwide
and have been translated into twenty-seven languages.
78
Paranthropolocy: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
[REVIEW] Through a Glass Darkly:
Magic, Dreams & Prophecy in Ancient Egypt
Callum E. Cooper
Through a Glass
Darkly
Magic, dreams and prophecy
in ancient Egypt
Edit eA by
Kasia Szpakowska
laranthropology Journal couldn't be a more apt place to
briefly discuss the following book, due to the interre-
lated issues of ancient human experiences, mysticism
and anomalous phenomena. It is not the first time
ancient Egypt and anomalous experiences have been
addressed in this journal (Cooper 2011). And though
it is rare to find literature that exclusively addresses
the subject of anomalous experiences in Egypt, there
have been some classic overviews of the subject pro-
duced in rare pieces (e.g., Dingwall 1930).
Through a Glass Darkly is a compilation of papers
from a 2003 conference highlighting current research
and findings on phenomena related to magic,
dreams, and prophecy in Ancient Egypt. The presen-
tations were given by several well noted Egyptologists
at the Baskerville Hall in Wales (near the village of
Hay-on-Wye), UK. Half of the papers presented of-
fer new theories and discussions of already well-
established knowledge on ancient Egyptian views on
dreams and their meaning, as well as on magic and
prophecy. While other papers consider modern re-
search, such as Robert Ritner, who presents new data
on a bronze serpent wand, which is frequently found
in Egyptian iconography.
The most intriguing papers, particularly where
paranthropology is concerned, are those addressing
the ancient views and interpretations of dreams and
magic. In the literature available on ancient Egypt
and dreams, particularly with Dr Szpakowska's work,
and Dingwall (1930), dreams were seen as a gateway
to the future, they could deliver precognitive mes-
sages or inspiration from supreme beings (much like
apparitions (Dodds, 1971)). Dreams and precogni-
tions have been found to be a natural aspect of hu-
man nature, from ancient times to the present day.
Research on the experiences of the ancient Egyptians
and contemporary anomalous phenomena has begun
to show that paranormal phenomena seem to be
natural and unchanged in their characteristics
throughout time (see Cooper, 2012). However, the
papers presented in Through a Glass Darkly also dem-
Through a Glass Darkly: Magic, Dreams and
Prophecy in Ancient Egypt.
Edited by Kasia Szpakowska
(The Classical Press of Wales, Hardback, 2006)
RRP £45.00
onstrate that such experiences are influenced by re-
ligious interpretation. Much relation is given to the
ancient gods of the time and their involvement in
dreams, magic and prophecy.
Conferences such as this, and the production of
presented papers in the form of a book, are highly
Vol. 4 No. 3
79
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
useful in updating the information and knowledge we
have on history and ancient societies (or any issues of
the arts and sciences). Though much like social sci-
ence, ancient history will always discover something
knew, and by understanding what we know about
human-beings from the social sciences, it helps us to
understand ancient history and our development
throughout time. In this instance, an understanding
of the paranthropological aspects of human nature
works well with the topics at hand, presented by Dr
Szpakowska.
Dr Szpakowska made the excellent point that
academic study for a long time regarding magic, the
mystical (especially the paranormal), has for a long
time been misunderstood and shunned. Conferences,
papers, books and educational programs are increas-
ing, regarding such teachings on the transpersonal,
mystical and paranormal. Even dreams within psy-
chology, from its Freudian beginning and onwards,
produced much criticisms as to whether pursuit of
studying such human features in modern day and
ancient history can teach us more about human so-
cieties. Dr Szpakowska (2003) has demonstrated oth-
erwise, and publication on such matters has increased
greatly in the last decade or so - especially with re-
gards to the interpretation of dreams in ancient
Egypt.
Through a Glass Darkly is a highly thought out col-
lection of Egyptological papers which I believe would
interest most people involved in paranthropology and
parapsychology - aside from Egyptology. As with
anomalous experiences, ancient societies and their
history present a puzzle for researchers, which re-
quire the gaps to be filled to help us learn more,
rather than simply making assumptions about how
things in the past or present work and are inter-
preted. This is why all research in social sciences has
its importance in our understanding of human func-
tioning in life, and our actions towards others. It is
only our personal assumptions and biases which af-
fect our understanding of ancient societies, and how
human systems work, rather than learning from
available evidence, as Dr Szpakowska points out.
It is further stated that anthropologists have the
advantage of living samples to learn from, while the
Egyptologist does not, and they must draw informa-
tion about the dead together, to form an understand-
ing. However, as we know from paranthropology, the
line between anthropology and Egyptology is argua-
bly level. The book itself hopes to inspire new think-
ing in - what I would class as - the paranthropological
aspects, surrounding practices and beliefs in magic,
dreams and prophecy in ancient societies. In quote:
In the end, perhaps the real beauty of the study of
ancient civilizations such as Ancient Egypt, is that
we can pursue the vapour trails left by individuals
in the past, the data and ideas of yesterday, and re-
examine and reconfigure them in tomorrow's new
light (Szpakowska, 2006, p.xiv)
I believe researchers dealing with any forms of excep-
tional human experiences can learn from this state-
ment. And, to any researchers of such phenomena,
this book is certainly of use in understanding experi-
ences of the ancient societies; in order to greater un-
derstand the experiences of today.
References:
Cooper, C.E. (201 1). The Ka of ancient Egypt. Par-
anthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to
the Paranormal, 2(3), 43-45.
Cooper, C. E. (2012). Social views on apparitions and sur-
vival in ancient and modern Egypt. Paper presented
at the 36 th International Conference of the Soci-
ety for Psychical Research, University of North-
ampton, UK.
Dingwall, E.J. (1930). Ghosts and spirits in the ancient
world. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &
Co.
Dodds, E.R. (1971). Supernormal phenomena in
classical antiquity. Proceedings of the Society for Psy-
chical Research, 55, 189-237.
Szpakowska, K. (2003). Behind closed eyes: Dreams and
nightmares in Ancient Egypt. Swansea: The Classi-
cal Press of Wales.
Callum E. Cooper, University of
Northampton, Centre for the Study of
Anomalous Psychological Processes
callum.cooper@northampton.ac.uk
Vol. 4 No. 3
80
Parcmthropology:
Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
We live in a world that is impossibly more fantastic than the present
materialist and scientistic paradigms allow. In such a gross mis-
match between the weirddom of the real and the Flatland of the
boring and banal, it is so hopeful, and so refreshing, to see serious
intellectuals take the strange so seriously. What we have with this
new journal and this remarkable collection of essays is a cause for
celebration.
Dr. Jeffrey J. Kripal, Author of Authors of the Impossible: The Sa-
cred and the Paranormal.
In 1908 William James wrote that: 'The great world, the back-
ground, in all of us, is the world of our beliefs. That is the world of
the permanencies and the immensities.' More than a century later
Jack Hunter has collated a selection of thought-provoking new nar-
ratives to help chart the geography of this world. In essays cover-
ing ground all the way from Tibet to Taiwan and into the landscape
of dreams and the Afterlife an array of internationally renowned
researchers discuss the discourse between the human, natural and
supernatural worlds in a bold attempt to record the history and
current affairs of this as yet mostly undiscovered country of which
we all (like it are not) are citizens.
Dr. Wendy Cousins, University of Ulster.
In a short period of time, Paranthropology has established itself as a
serious and intelligent voice in the difficult and sensitive area of the anthropological study of the 'paranormal.' We
are living in a complicated period in relation to our understanding of 'extraordinary' phenomena. Naive materialist
approaches are more assertive than ever, in anthropology and in the world more generally. At the same time, the
taboos against admitting to the reality of the paranormal are weakening. There is a growing body of writing which
takes the paranormal and extraordinary seriously, while bringing to it the same academic standards that any other
subject matter would require. This is a valuable and important development, and it helps open the way to new modes
of understanding in the sciences and social sciences that will not reject scientific rationality, but expand that rational-
ity so as to include more of the world of human experience. The articles in this Paranthropology reader provide im-
portant clues and suggestions, along with rigorous argument, to help us in exploring what is likely to be a major
area of anthropological engagement in coming years.
Dr. Geoffrey Samuel, Research Group on the Body, Health and Religion (BAHAR), School of History, Archaeology
and Religion, Cardiff University.
This compilation is an impressive collection of academic approaches to the anthropological study of anomalous
experience. ..To have a collection of essays of this calibre in one volume makes this book a real gem. Previously those
of us interested in the anthropological approach to the paranormal had to make do with occasional contributions in
other publications.
David Taylor, Anomaly: Journal of Research Into the Paranormal
http://paranthropologyjournal.weebly.com/anthology.html
www.paranthropology.co.uk
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